The study is aiming to find out whether online discussion groups can provide a setting for young people and health professionals to learn from one another about self-harm. We are inviting young people with experience of self-harm, student health professionals and recently qualified health professionals to take part in an exploratory online discussion group.
You are eligible to take part in the study if you fall into one of the following groups:
To take part in the study, you will need to register via the link at the bottom of this page. You will be asked to complete a brief online registration questionnaire as part of the recruitment process. You will also be asked to provide a username and an email address, so that we can contact you with details of how to join the online discussion. Once you have registered, we will email you within 3 weeks to tell you what to do next. We would encourage you to register and would ask you to be patient while the recruitment window is open.
We aim to include everyone who fits our selection criteria, and will use the information from the questionnaire to allocate people to different discussion groups according to their experience. We plan to have three separate discussion groups running at the same time. One will be made up entirely of young people with experience of self-harm; the other groups will contain a different mix of young people, healthcare students and qualified health professionals. This is because one of the things we want to do is compare how young people talk to each other when they are alone with how they talk when there are health professionals and students present. We will not tell you who else is in your group because that might influence the way you talk. Before the online discussion groups start, you will be asked to give your consent again to take part in the forum discussions.
Each group will use a separate bulletin board and will be open for 8 weeks. The groups will have some ground rules and there will be a moderator on hand to check that no-one is posting stuff that may be harmful to others. There will also be a researcher in the online groups at different times, taking part in discussion and observing what is going on. New discussion topics will be introduced every few days, mostly relating to self-harm and the NHS, but you will also be free to start a new topic or thread if there is something you want to discuss.
You will be able to log in to your group’s forum and catch up with the discussion whenever you choose. We would be grateful if you would do this at least once a week, so that you can contribute something to all the discussion topics and help to keep the threads going. Anyone who actively takes part in discussion during the 8 weeks will receive an Amazon e-voucher worth £25 as a thank-you.
The researcher will print off the text of the discussions at the end of each day. We will use this to explore how people have discussed self-harm and compare talk in the three groups. At the end of the 8 week period, the groups will merge into one and remain open for a further 4 weeks to enable you to continue to post and draw discussions to a close. The moderators will still be present during this time.
At the end of the 8 weeks, you will be asked to complete another short online questionnaire. This will help us to know how you felt about taking part in the discussion group, whether it was any different from other bulletin boards you use and whether you think you learned anything. At this stage you will also be invited to contribute to a wiki. As well as running our own exploratory discussion groups, we will be reviewing what is already known about the use of online discussion groups in health care, e.g. what previous studies have shown. We will put this review up on the project website and everyone who is taking part in the study will be free to read it and edit it. So if you’ve read an article or a book or anything else that says something you think is relevant, you will be able to add this to our review. You will be given a password to allow you to contribute to the wiki over a 4 week period. Following the discussion groups and the wiki the website will close.
Yes. You have a right to withdraw from the study at any time without giving a reason. If you stop contributing to the discussion, a member of the study team will e-mail you privately to check that you are OK. If you wish to withdraw from the study and don’t want any further contact, just send an e-mail reply to let them us this. There will also be ‘I want to withdraw’ and ‘What happens after the study ends’ page available to use.
When you register, you will be asked to choose a username specifically for this project. This can be any made-up name and will enable you to remain anonymous during the study. Your username is how you will identify yourself when your are in the forum. You will also be asked to supply a valid e-mail address. If you don’t want to share your regular e-mail address with us, you can create a new account (e.g. hotmail or yahoo) to use during the study, just so long as you remember to check it regularly. The e-mail address you provide will only be known to the researcher and will not be shared with anyone else. An exception is when a serious violation of site rules occurs. Usual bulletin board terms and conditions will apply and you will need to read and agree to these as part of the final consent process.
The views you express in the online discussion will be seen only by the other members of your group, and the research team.
If you want to chat privately to another member of the group, you can do so using the private messaging facility. All private messages will be copied to the moderator who will check them daily, to make sure that no-one is putting themselves or others at risk.
If the moderator is worried that someone is posting inappropriate information or putting themselves or others at risk, they will discuss the content of the posting with other members of the research team and may consult other experts about how to deal with the situation, but will not pass on any personal details or e-mail addresses.
All the information collected in the study will be stored securely on an encrypted university computer in accordance with the Data Protection Act. At the end of the study, you will be sent a summary of the results by e-mail. A report will also be posted on the study website and we will publish the results in journals and other media. We may include quotes from the online discussion in these reports, but no names will be attached to them, and we will ask your consent to use your direct quotes. Your username and e-mail address will not appear in any report or publication. A privacy policy and site conditions are also available and it is important that you have read these prior to agreeing to take part. You will be prompted to read these during registration and consent.
If you have any questions or would like more information about the study you can e-mail the researcher via the following link:
We will try to respond to your enquiry within 24 hours.
If you want to register, click here.