Title: Investigating the Role of Friendships in Eating Disorder Recovery
Investigators:
Dr. Elizabeth Page-Gould, Assistant Professor
University of Toronto, Canada
Department of Psychology
Email: liz@psych.utoronto.ca
Jacklyn Koyama, Postdoctoral Fellow
University of Toronto, Canada
Email: jacklyn.koyama@mail.utoronto.ca
Marianne Rouleau-Tang, Undergraduate Student
University of Toronto, Canada
Email: marianne.rouleautang@mail.utoronto.ca
Introduction
Thank you for your interest in our study! This research study is completely voluntary, meaning you can choose whether or not you'd like to take part in this study. Before agreeing to participate, we invite you to take the time to read and understand the following information. You will only be contacted if you are eligible to participate in the interview.
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to learn more about the role that friendship plays in eating disorder recovery. We are interested in understanding how friendships can influence eating disorder recovery, how they affect one's ability to seek support, and whether they play a role in maintaining an eating disorder. We believe this research study will help identify the specific protective factors that contribute to recovery of eating disorders.
Study Procedures
In this study, you will be asked to complete 1) a virtual questionnaire via REDCap, and 2) a virtual interview session that will be held on Zoom. You will only be asked to complete the virtual interview session if you are eligible to participate and we have contacted you.
Time and Compensation
It is expected that the virtual questionnaire will take around 15 to 20 minutes and the interview will take around 1 to 1.5 hours. You will be compensated $5.5 CAD for the questionnaire, which is equivalent to $4 USD, for the questionnaire. To be compensated, you must answer 3 or more items of the questionnaire (consent form does not count). If you participate in the interview, you will be compensated $16.55 CAD per hour, or $12.5 USD per hour. Compensation will be provided through Amazon gift cards. We expect around 120 participants to take part in the questionnaire, and 35 participants to take part in the interviews. If you have any concerns about compensation, you may email the researcher at Marianne.rouleautang@mail.utoronto.ca and she will ensure you receive your compensation.
Questionnaire
The questionnaire will include 5 parts: 1) The first part will ask you to input your name and email; 2) Questions about your age, gender identity, ethnicity, and where you currently live; 3) five clinical questions about whether you have been diagnosed, when you have been diagnosed, what your treatment was, when your treatment was completed, and the effect that friendships had on your recovery; 4) five questions asking whether you have binged, purged, intentionally fasted, intentionally restricted food intake and exercised excessively in the past 3 months; 5) A 28-item Eating Disorder Examination Questionnaire. If you choose to withdraw from the survey at any time, you can simply close your browser window.
Interview
If you are eligible to participate in the interview, you will be asked to complete another consent form. During the interview, you will be asked questions about how you perceived friendships to have affected your eating disorder recovery and what role they played in getting daily support. Depending on the intensity of your feelings about your friendships, you may find it upsetting to think about. However, we expect that these will be things that you think about normally as you go through your daily life. Sharing personal information in the chat is prohibited in order to further protect your identity.
You will be able to take breaks as necessary, skip any questions you would prefer not to answer, and withdraw at any point in the interview. Upon your completion or withdrawal of the interview, you will have the option to participate in a 5 to 7 minute guided self-compassion meditation. You will also be guided through a debrief of the study, where you will be provided a list of resources.
Eligibility Criteria for Interview and Recontacting
To be eligible to participate in an interview, participants must be 18 years of age or older, must have the ability to understand and speak English, must live in the US or Canada, must have been diagnosed with an Eating Disorder by a licensed clinician, must score lower than 2.8 on the EDE-Q, and must not have binged, purged, intentionally fasted, intentionally restricted food intake and exercised excessively in the past 3 months. If by March 1st, we do not recruit 12 participants for the interview, we will be changing the criteria from 2.8 to 4.0 on the EDE-Q. As such, there will be an option for you to participate in the interviews if you meet the second criteria. For this reason, we are including an option for you to choose to be recontacted in case you'd like to participate in the future.
Conditions for Participating
When completing the questionnaire, you may decline to answer any questions that you do not wish to answer by leaving answers blank or responding with "prefer not to answer" to optional questions, and you may withdraw from participation without penalty, provided you have started the questionnaire.
Withdrawal
Your participation is voluntary, meaning you are free to withdraw from the study. You do not have to provide reasoning. You may withdraw at any point before May 31st, 2024. If you choose to withdraw from the study, all of your data - including personally identifiable information such as emails and names, questionnaire data, zoom recordings, and transcripts - will be permanently deleted. Questionnaire data that is incomplete after any given point in the survey will be assumed to represent withdrawal and will not be included in any final analyses or publication. While completing the questionnaire, you may choose to withdraw by closing the browser website. If you choose to withdraw after completing the questionnaire and/or interview, you may withdraw by contacting Marianne Rouleau-Tang via email: marianne.rouleautang@mail.utoronto.ca. While completing the interview, you may also withdraw by providing notice verbally.
Risks
When responding to questions on the questionnaire, such as answering questions about eating disorder symptoms and diagnoses, individuals may experience discomfort and negative emotions such as, stress, shame, or anxiety. If you would prefer not to answer any questions, you may leave them blank. You are also free to withdraw at any point of the questionnaire by closing the browser window. As long as you complete 3 items or more, you will be compensated $5.5 CAD for the questionnaire.
There is a risk associated with participant confidentiality due to the use of videoconferencing. For instance, it is possible that video-transmission is breached and accessed by unauthorized persons.
There is a high degree of psychological and emotional risk because you will be asked about your experiences before and after your eating disorder recovery journey, which may be negative. During the interview, there is also a possibility that the questions around friendships will elicit negatively emotionally charged memories. Despite the research team's efforts to be impartial during the interview, you may still feel judgement from the interviewer, which could carry on beyond the interview session. However, you do not have to answer any of the questions that you do not want to, you may take as many breaks as necessary during the interview, and you may withdraw from the study without penalty at any point before May 31st.
It may be more difficult to discuss your responses or to intervene if you were to become distressed by any aspect of the study, as this study takes place virtually. If you are under distress, we strongly recommend you reach out to helplines provided in the resource list.
Benefits
There are no direct benefits to participating in the study, except that you will be compensated for the partial or full completion of each part of the study. We hope that this study will provide a better understanding of how and why friendships influence eating disorder recovery.
Access to information
The primary research team (Marianne Rouleau-Tang, Dr. Jacklyn Koyama, and Dr. Elizabeth Page-Gould), as well as 1 to 2 research assistants will be the only authorized personnel who will have access to the participant data.
Confidentiality
Your privacy and confidentiality is of the utmost importance to us. We will not be collecting any personally identifiable information beyond the email address and first names. We have tried our best to minimize the risks of confidentiality by using the Zoom professional license, provided by the University of Toronto, to host the Zoom interview sessions, and by temporarily storing identifying information on password-protected OneDrive files, which are only to be accessed by the research team. Four months after data collection, emails and names will be permanently deleted. The rest of your data will not be linked to any personally identifiable information such as names and emails, as these pieces of information will be housed in files separate from your data. To preserve your identity, you will be assigned a numeric participant ID, this will be the only piece of information that will be linked to your data. You will also be renamed to a participant ID once you join the zoom meeting. We will also only be storing audio recordings to further preserve your identity. The data will be collected and stored on an encrypted server and it will only be analyzed on encrypted computers. All data except personally identifiable data (emails and first names) will be retained indefinitely, emails and first names will be removed 4 months after data collection.
Resource List
A list of mental health resources will be provided to you on the final page of this questionnaire. You may also access this list by clicking here.
Resource List.pdf
Publishing Results
When we report the results of this research, all of the data will be in a summarized form such that no individual could be identified from these summarized results. Additionally, if you select the option to allow researchers to publish quotes, all identifying information will be removed, and you will be assigned a pseudonym.
Further, all participants will be sent a brief summary of the research findings via email. In addition to this, if you would like to receive a full copy of the academic publication, please email Marianne Rouleau-Tang at marianne.rouleautang@mail.utoronto.ca, and she will send you the final report when it is completed.
Contact Information
If you have questions, concerns, and complaints regarding your participation in the research project or if you want to be removed from participation, you can contact the researcher in charge of the research project, Marianne Rouleau-Tang, at marianne.rouleautang@mail.utoronto.ca.
If you have questions about your rights as a participant, please contact the University of Toronto Office of Research Ethics at ethics.review@utoronto.ca or 416-946-3273.