Participant Information
Exploring Attachment Styles and Dyadic Trust in Romantic Relationships
Faculty of Health and Life Sciences Department of Psychology, Health and Professional Development Oxford Brookes University, Headington, Oxford OX3 0BP.
Researcher: Eve Brassington Email: 19054730@brookes.ac.uk
Supervisor: Sunae Kim, Email: s.kim@brookes.ac.uk Tel: 01865 741111
Prior research has demonstrated the importance of trust in establishing and maintaining healthy relationships. However, there is a limited body of work exploring how an individual's attachment style shapes their ability to trust or distrust their potential partner. Therefore, the aim of this research is to explore the relationship between attachment style and how one’s attachment working model influences dyadic trust in a romantic relationship.
Who has been invited to participate?
All individuals over 18 years of age and are currently or have experienced a romantic relationship lasting 3 moths or more, have been invited to take part.
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 participant information sheet from the main researcher by contacting them using the email address below. If you decide to take part you are still free to withdraw your unprocessed data before submitting it, by closing the window of the questionnaire and experiment.
What will happen to me if I take part?
Participants are asked to complete a short 5 minute word identifying task on a monitor screen and a 5 minute questionnaire.
What are the possible disadvantages and risks of taking part?
Participants are asked to spend 10-15 minutes completing a word identification task followed by a questionnaire on past and present relationships. Participants may experience some psychological discomfort when answering questions on past and present relationships. If so, participants will be guided to the debrief section which contains support on any issues experienced.
What are the possible benefits of taking part?
There are no individual benefits to you, but if you choose to take part in this study then you will be helping us to better understand the role that attachment security plays in dyadic trust within romantic relationships. 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 a Google Drive, for which the University has a security agreement.
If you would like to take part, please click on the Continue to Questionnaire button at the bottom of this page before proceeding.
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.
This 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 center/repository relevant to this subject area for suture 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.
This research is being conducted by a Psychology student at Oxford Brookes University as part of the 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
Please contact the researcher or their supervisor (contact details above) if you would like any further information about this study.
If you wish to obtain a summary of the findings when they have been written up, please e-mail Eve Brassington at 19054730@brookes.ac.uk from May 2023 onwards.
Thank you for taking time to read the information sheet.
