Information Sheet for Workshop 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 an in-person workshop facilitated by myself, Mary O’Mahony
- Take part, along with other stakeholders, in an online follow-up meeting, which will be facilitated by myself, Mary O’Mahony.
- Complete a survey before and after the workshop asking about your attitudes, expectations and experiences.
- You may also be invited to participate voluntarily in a focus group or interview following the workshop, which would require separate consent
Data collected during the workshop and online follow-up meeting will be in the form of comments, ideas and words contributed during group discussion and brainstorming. All data will be anonymised, and contributions will be attributed to participants pseudonymously by stakeholder group.
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, refuse to participate in specific discussions or decide to withdraw from the workshop or online meeting. Once the workshop and follow-up meeting have been concluded, you can choose to withdraw your contributions at any time in the subsequent two weeks after the conclusion of the online meeting. However, as the collected data will be an amalgam of contributions generated by the group of participants, it may not be possible to delete your qualitative data. As the survey is anonymised, with no personal identifiers, you maintain the right to withdraw from the survey at any stage up to the point of submission. At this point, your data will be collated with that of other participants and can no longer be retracted.
All 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 workshop and online follow-up have been completed, all digital contributions will be transferred to an encrypted laptop and physical artefacts will be digitised and stored on an encrypted laptop. The physical artefacts will be stored securely in the OurKidsCode offices in TCD until digitising is complete and then shredded and securely disposed of. Digital data will be stored on a Trinity College Dublin supported MS365 cloud storage platform 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, Siobhán 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: