Information Sheet for Focus Group Participants
Using a Future Creating Workshop to Support Collective Sense-Making in a STEM Education Research Project
Thank you for considering participating in this research project. The purpose of this document is to explain to you what the work is about and what your participation would involve, to enable you to make an informed choice.
The purpose of this study is to examine the use of a Future Creating Workshop in mobilising the voices of diverse stakeholders to imagine future directions for the OurKidsCode research project. Should you choose to participate, you will be asked to take part, along with other stakeholders, in a focus group, which will be facilitated by myself, Mary O’Mahony. This focus group will be audio recorded and/or transcribed and is expected to take 30-40 minutes to complete.
Participation in this study is completely voluntary. There is no obligation to participate, and should you choose to do so, you can refuse to answer specific questions or decide to withdraw from the focus group. Once the focus group has been concluded, you can choose to withdraw your contribution at any time in the subsequent two weeks after the conclusion of the focus group. However, as the transcript will be an amalgam of voices generated from the focus group audio file, it may not be possible to delete your data.
All of the information you provide will be kept confidential and anonymous, and will be available only to myself, Mary O’Mahony and my thesis supervisor, Siobhán O’Sullivan. Please be aware, however, that while we can guarantee that we will maintain confidentiality, we cannot guarantee that group members will do the same.
During the study, if you share information that suggests you or someone else may be at serious risk of harm, the researcher may need to pass this on to appropriate services (e.g., emergency services, your GP, a support person, or a safeguarding team). Similarly, if at any point the researcher becomes concerned about an immediate risk to your safety or the safety of others, they are required to follow institutional safeguarding procedures. Any action taken will be done to protect your wellbeing, and we will explain what is happening and why whenever possible.
Once the focus group is completed, the transcription of the recording will be reviewed by the researcher, and all identifying information will be removed. Once this is done, the audio-recording will also be deleted and only the anonymised transcript will remain. This will be stored on a Trinity College Dublin supported MS365 cloud storage platform.
The data will be stored for up to ten years.
The information you provide will contribute to a Master’s Thesis in Voluntary and Community Sector Management in the UCC School of Applied Social Studies and may also contribute to research publications and/or conference presentations.
This study has obtained ethical approval from my supervisor, Siobhan O’Sullivan
If you have any queries about this research, you can contact me at mary.callaghan.omahony@tcd.ie or my thesis supervisor, Siobhán O’Sullivan at siobhan.osull@ucc.ie
If you agree to take part in this study, please click here: