Informed Consent
Study Purpose and Procedures
You are invited to take part in a research survey sponsored by bwin.com and conducted by researchers at the Division on Addictions, the Cambridge Health Alliance. The Cambridge Health Alliance is a teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School. The purpose of this survey is to evaluate the self-help Toolkit, Your First Step to Change. You were selected for this survey because you visited the Toolkit webpage. If you agree to help, you will take a brief survey before you begin the Toolkit. The survey will take about 5 minutes, and we will invite you to complete follow-up surveys 3 months, 6 months, and 12 months later. If you decide to begin the survey, you can quit the survey at any time and go directly to the Toolkit.
Possible Benefits
You might not benefit from answering the survey but your feedback will help us. Your feedback will help us to make changes necessary to help more people.
Possible Risks
There is minimal risk involved in taking part in the survey. Some of the survey questions are about personal problems and answering them may cause you discomfort or stress. You can stop the survey at any time. If you feel distressed after taking the survey, please look for information on bwin.com's responsible gambling resource webpage, or contact this study's principal investigators, Dr. Heather Gray and Dr. Debi LaPlante.
Confidentiality
We are committed to making sure that your survey answers are confidential. The only personal information we will collect from you is your email address. We are collecting your email address so that an automated system can keep track of which surveys you have taken and remind you when it is time to take a follow-up survey (in 3 months, 6 months, and 12 months). Because we will use an automated system, we will not personally access your email address at any time during or following this study. At the end of the study period, your email address will be deleted from the system. At no point during or after the study period will your email address be connected to the responses you provide in the surveys. When the researchers analyze the responses to the survey, we will use anonymous numeric codes. No bwin.com personnel will have access to your email address or survey responses, during or after the study period.
Consent
Taking part in this survey is voluntary. If you decide to take the survey, you can quit at any point and go directly to the Toolkit. If you do not take the survey you will not be punished or lose the benefit of visiting the Toolkit website again in the future. Whether you take part, refuse to take part, or decide to leave the survey, you will be able to use the Toolkit whenever you wish.
Questions
If you have any questions or any other concerns, please contact the following people:
Cambridge Health Alliance Institutional Review Board Co-chairs:
Drs. Mark Albanese and Lior Givon
Telephone: 617-591-6020
Address: 1493 Cambridge Street, Cambridge, MA 02139
Co-Principal Investigators:
Dr. Heather Gray
Email: hgray@challiance.org
Dr. Debi LaPlante
Email: debi_laplante@hms.harvard.edu
Once you begin, you are free to quit the survey at any time and go directly to the Toolkit. However, your responses will be most useful to us if you continue for the whole 5-minute survey.