Participant Information
The relationship between personality traits and memory
Department of Psychology, Health and Professional Development Faculty of Health and Life Sciences Oxford Brookes University
Researcher: Ella Foreman, Email: 19013032@brookes.ac.uk Supervisor: Lisa Hinkley, Email: lhinkley@brookes.ac.uk Tel: 01865483777
Study title Exploring the relationship between personality traits and memory
You are invited to take part in a research study. Before you decide whether or not to take part, it is important for you to understand why the research is being done and what it will involve.
Please take time to read the following information carefully
What is the purpose of the study?
The aim of the study is to investigate whether there is a relationship between personality traits and memory. The study will take around 15 minutes to complete.
Who has been invited to participate?
You have volunteered to take part in this study following a social media advertisement from the researcher. There will be around 80 other participants taking part in this study and all participants will be 18 years old and over.
Do I have to take part?
No. It is up to you to decide whether or not to take part. If you do decide to take part you will be asked to provide your consent, and you can request a copy of this information sheet from the main researcher. If you decide to take part you are still free to withdraw unprocessed data and without giving any reason for doing so. You can do this by simply closing the browser on the laptop at any point during the study, before submitting your responses. Any incomplete responses will not be included in the final data.
What will happen to me if I take part?
You will first be required to complete a personality questionnaire. There are 60 questions and you will be asked to rate how much you feel they apply to you (from strongly disagree to strongly agree). This should take 15 minutes to complete. You will then be required to complete a lexical decision task where you will need to identify words, non-words and animal words, this will be done by pressing a particular laptop key for each of the categories. You will be told which key to press for each condition at the start of the experiment. This should take around 20 minutes to complete. You will not be timed when completing this task.
What are the possible disadvantages and risks of taking part?
There should be no disadvantages to taking part in this study other than the time you will give up in order to complete it. However, you are completing a personality questionnaire and there is a possibility that this may make you self-aware of any subjectively perceived personality issues. If you think this will be the case, you may not want to volunteer for the study, however, support links will be made available to you at the end of the study should you feel the need to use them.
What are the possible benefits of taking part?
There are no individual benefits to you, but if you chose to take part in this online study then you will be helping us to better understand the relationship between personality and memory ability.
The main benefit will be to the researcher who is completing this research as part of their studies in psychology at Oxford Brookes University.
Will what I say in this study be kept confidential?
Yes. You will not be asked to give any information that could be used to identify you personally (e.g., your name, date of birth, IP address). Only the researchers involved in the study will have access to your anonymous responses. Confidentiality, privacy and anonymity will be ensured in the collection, storage and publication of research material (subject to legal limitations). Research data will be stored in Google Drive, for which the University has a security agreement.
What should I do if I want to take part?
If you would like to take part in the study you can contact the researcher via email or by completing the google form which will give you available dates and time slots for you to complete the study.
What will happen to the results of the research study?
The results of this study will be written up for a dissertation and may be published in an academic journal, or presented at a conference. If they are not going to be used for further study or research then they will be deleted once the dissertation student has graduated.
They may also be used for future research on the topic. If this is the case, an anonymised data set, gathered for this study, may be stored in a specialist data centre/repository relevant to this subject area for future research. All data collected from this research will be kept in keeping with the University’s policy of Academic Integrity. This means that all data will be securely stored in paper or electronic form for 10 years after the project is finished.
If you wish to receive a summary of the research findings, please request this from the researcher via email before June 2023.
Who has reviewed the study?
This research is being conducted by a Psychology student at Oxford Brookes University as part of a requirement for their course. The study procedures have been reviewed and approved by the Psychology Research Ethics Committee, Oxford Brookes University. If you have any concerns about how the study has been conducted, please contact the Psychology Research Ethics Officer, Dr Emma Davies, on edavies@brookes.ac.uk
Contact for Further Information If you would like any further information then you can contact me, or my supervisor. Our details are on the top of this sheet.
If you wish to receive a summary of the study’s findings then please email me by June 2023.
If you wish to obtain a summary of the findings when they have been written up please e-mail Ella Foreman at 19013032@brookes.ac.uk.
Thank you for taking the time to read this information sheet.
