Participant Information and Consent

Decision Making: Jury Decision Making

Information for Participants

1.         Invitation

My name is Isabelle Hateley. I am an Honours student at the University of Tasmania. I would like to invite you to participate in a psychology study about decision making. The study is being conducted under the supervision of Dr. Jim Sauer of the School of Psychological Sciences at the University of Tasmania.

2.         What is the purpose of this study?

This study is investigating factors that influence mock-juror judgements and decisions.

3.         Why have I been invited to participate?

For this experiment, we are looking for people aged 18 years or more who have normal or corrected to normal vision (i.e., glasses or contact lenses are fine).

Participation in this study is voluntary – you are entirely free to choose to participate or not, and there will be no consequences if you decide not to participate. If you do participate, any information you provide will be anonymous and no participants in the experiment will be individually identifiable.

4.         What will I be asked to do?

Participation would require approximately 30 minutes of your time. The study would be completed entirely online. The experiment involves reading details of a non-violent, hypothetical crime and then answering some questions about the information you have been shown. Participants will also be asked to complete some brief questionnaires about themselves.

5.         Are there any possible benefits from participation in this study?

The results of this study will help us to understand which factors are influential in judgement formation and decision making in various contexts. This information will be useful in developing better ways to present information to assist people make informed decisionsTo thank you for your participation, you will receive 30 minutes research participation course credits for psychology undergraduate units.

6.         Are there any possible risks from participation in this study?

There are no foreseeable risks associated with participating in this study.

7.         What if I change my mind during or after the study?

That’s fine - you are free to withdraw from the study at any time, and without providing an explanation. If you choose to withdraw during the study, your responses will be destroyed. If you complete the study, you will not be able to withdraw your data because it will be stored in anonymous form (and so we will not be able to identify which responses are yours).

8.         What will happen to the information when this study is over?

The data from this study will be kept in secure storage on the University of Tasmania premises and servers. We will not be collecting any data that will make you personally identifiable; all the responses you provide us will be anonymous.

In accordance with Open Science practises, we will also be making the raw data available to other researchers upon request via personal correspondence or open-science platforms (e.g. Open Science Framework). This means that other researchers will be able to access the data from this study to check the work we have done, as well as utilise it for potentially different purposes than those outlined above. Please understand that by consenting to participate in this study, you are also giving your permission for the researchers to share the data you provide in this study with other researchers.

9.         How will the results of the study be published?

The results of the study will be published in an honours thesis and an academic journal. Once the study is complete, if you would like to know more information about what we found, please feel free to contact us!

No individual participants will be identifiable in the publication of the results.

10.       What if I have questions about this study?

If you have any questions about this study, please feel free to contact us by email: jim.sauer@utas.edu.au

This study has been approved by the Tasmania Social Sciences Human Research Ethics Committee.  If you have concerns or complaints about the conduct of this study, you can contact the Executive Officer of the HREC (Tasmania) Network on (03) 6226 2975 or email ss.ethics@utas.edu.au   The Executive Officer is the person nominated to receive complaints from research participants. You will need to quote H0018352.

Thank you for your attention - your time is very much appreciated!

If you have read and understood all of the above information, and consent to participating, please click the Next button below to progress to the main study.

If you do not wish to participate in this study, please close your browser.