Facebook User Questionnaire
INFORMATION
You are invited to participate in a research study concerned with how Facebook users think about themselves, their relationships, and their Facebook usage. In this study, you will be asked to complete a questionnaire about your self-perceptions, your thoughts about real and idealized relationship partners, and the kind of things you use Facebook for. We estimate that this questionnaire should take 10-20 minutes to complete.
Besides completing this questionnaire, we are also inviting you to allow our research team to access your Facebook profile, so that we can use your responses to the questionnaire to help us interpret information posted on your profile. If your profile is set as "private," you agree to add one of our research team as a "friend" so that we can access your profile information. (You will be given a reminder to do this when you have completed the questionnaire.) Finally, we are also inviting you to allow our research team to show information from your profile including your photo, interests, and so on -- but without your name, username, or e-mail address -- to other IU students who do not know you personally.* We are interested in finding out how accurately people can form impressions of others based on information posted on Facebook. So we will ask those students to make ratings of things such as your personality characteristics and political views based on information that you have included in your Facebook profile. They will also rate the attractiveness of your photo. We will use your responses to this questionnaire to assess the accuracy of those students' guesses and ratings.
*If any student rater happens to recognize you based on information in your profile, they will be instructed not to make any ratings of you.
RISKS
There are no foreseeable risks involved with this study.
CONFIDENTIALITY
The information that is recorded in this questionnaire will be kept confidential. Your name will not be used. We will ask for your IU email address, in order to be able to notify you if you win one of the cash prizes (see below), and to match your responses on this questionnaire to your information posted on Facebook. However, this identifying information will never be available to anyone outside the research team, and all our records containing your identifying information will be destroyed on or before May 31, 2007. In reports of the results of this study, there will be no way of identifying your responses or you personally. Information from your profile may be shown to profile rating participants, but (as described above) if they recognize you they will be asked not to rate your profile.
COMPENSATION
After you complete the questionnaire, we will offer to let you view the average responses to our questions provided by other IU Facebook users. By comparing your own responses to others, you may learn more about yourself and receive the satisfaction of participating in psychological research. We will also enter you in a drawing for one of ten prizes of $50 each. The exact odds of winning a prize depend on the number of people who participate by completing this questionnaire, but we will seek to recruit approximately 1000 participants, which would make the odds of winning a prize 1/100. The drawing for the prizes will be held on or before May 1, 2007 (after the study is complete). If you win a prize we will notify you by email of how you can collect it.
CONTACT
If you have any questions or concerns at any time about the study or procedures, you may contact one of the experimenters, Winter Mason (email: wimason@indiana.edu) or Charlie Seger (email: cseger@indiana.edu), or the Principal Investigator, Eliot R. Smith, at the Department of Psychology, Room A316, Indiana University, Bloomington, (812) 856-0196, (e-mail: esmith4@indiana.edu).
If you feel that you have not been treated according to the descriptions in this form or that your rights as a participant in research have been violated during the course of this study, you may contact the Office for the Human Subjects Committee, Indiana University, Carmichael Center L03, 530 E. Kirkwood Ave., Bloomington, IN 47408, (812) 855-3067 (e-mail: iub_hsc@indiana.edu).
PARTICIPATION
Your participation in this study is voluntary. You can decline to participate. If you decide to participate, you may withdraw from the study at any time without penalty. If you withdraw from the study prior to completion of your questionnaire, your data will not be recorded.
CONSENT
I have read and understand the above information. I have had the opportunity to print or electronically save a copy of this form. I agree to take part in this study, both by completing the questionnaire and by allowing the research use of my Facebook profile information as described above.
Form date: 2/13/2007