Sample Consent Form - For Review Only

                                                           

Researcher(s): Sarah Schmalenberger, PhD. Professor of Music, University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, Minnesota USA. Visiting Researcher, University of Regina, Fulbright Canada Scholar, Department of Music, ssd161@uregina.ca

 

Purpose(s) and Objective(s) of the Research:

• This research uses the lens of Music to integrate social, ecological, and economic aspects of Sustainability. It focuses on exploring fundamental sources of sound to understand how people select and combine sounds to create music. Guiding this inquiry is the notion of “throwaway culture,” and how items are discarded, neglected, or overlooked in societies

• Data for this research will be collected from the researcher’s notes of music making sessions as well as written reflections from participants who volunteer to contribute comments about their experiences making music in collaborative, improvised sessions with unusual items and sounds

 

Procedures:

Participation in this research requires signed consent of understanding the procedures and information, itemized in this document.

• Participation in this research will involve attending one or more sessions of guided, collaborative music-making activities. Each session will last for approximately 90 minutes and take place on the campus of the University of Regina. Participants can expect to engage in one or more of the following activities during these sessions:

  • Play rhythms and move in coordination with pulse

  • Create sounds on various recycled materials to explore their sonic properties, describe those properties, and utilize the sounds to generate expressive forms of musical communication

  • Develop an understanding of musical form through generating sounds to create expressive musical gestures of communication

  • Utilize non-verbal gestures to convey intention to peers toward creating and combining sounds to make formal constructions of sound-as-music

  • Synthesize soundmaking activities with explorations of sustainability in music, on planes of both material and human resources

• Participation in this research involves a minimum of attending one 90-minute session. Consent will be ongoing for participation in additional sessions, with verbally re-consenting at successive sessions

• Participants will be invited to consent to contribute to the research by providing written reflections of their session experience(s), using writing prompts provided by the researcher. These reflections will be collected using TEAMS 

  • The TEAMS program will use a “master list” file that links participant names to a code number, that will be stored in a password-protected encrypted file that is stored separately from the research file. This will enable the researcher to remove any identifying information from the reflections data prior to dissemination.

• Participants may change their mind about participating, and/or about contributing written reflections and request they be omitted. Once data collection is complete (May 2025), it will no longer be possible to withdraw data since the master list will be destroyed, and the researcher will not be able to locate individual participant contributions.

• The researcher may record audio examples of the music created in sessions, and they may photograph selected items used to make musical sounds. Identifying information – facial or conversational (voice) – will be deleted from the data by blurring or cropping images or deleting audio conversation

• The researcher will generate qualitative data from the music sessions and also the participants’ written comments. This data will be analyzed for academic and curricular purposes, resulting in presentations and publications. The researcher may use selected audio video material in academic presentations related to the thesis of music and sustainability

• Please feel free to ask any questions regarding the procedures and goals of the study or your role.

 

Funded by: Fulbright Canada. The researcher is a visiting scholar through an annual award from the Fulbright Canada initiative, through May 1st 2025.

 

Potential Risks:

• There are no known or anticipated risks to you by participating in this research

 

Potential Benefits:

• There are no guaranteed personal benefits from participation

• Participants may gain benefits of insight into the creative processes, skills in creative problem solving, and insight into the foundations of sustainability. The collaborative nature of the research activities will facilitate relationship-building skills in communication, both verbally and non-verbally, which in turn can benefit participants’ awareness of sustainable actions supporting social and material health

 

Compensation:

• none

 

Confidentiality:

• The researcher will not disclose identifiable information about the participant in the reporting or dissemination of the research findings.

• The collaborative, participatory nature of music making activities for this research precludes total anonymity. Nevertheless, participant contact information will not be shared with other participants, nor will participant identities be used in any documents or data collected.

• Persons who decide to participate in this research project will be directed to sign their consent electronically using the researcher’s University of St. Thomas Qualtrics and OneDrive platforms.

  • Qualtrics and One Drive are highly secure applications endorsed by the University of Regina IT services and the University of St. Thomas IT services. These applications require organization-wide protocols of two-factor authentication as well as encryption of data in transit and at rest.

  • The researcher will create a “master list” file linking each participant’s name to a code that is password-protected and encrypted and stored in an encrypted OneDrive file separately from the Consent Form and the research data.

  • Once data collection is complete (May 2025), participant contact information will be deleted. Participants may no longer contribute to the study nor edit their data

• Participants who choose to provide written reflective commentary on their experience(s) will be invited to submit their comments securely using the researcher’s University of St. Thomas Teams portal.

  • Microsoft Teams is a highly secure application used for storing data and is endorsed by the University of Regina IT services and the University of St. Thomas IT services. Teams enforces team-wide and organization-wide two-factor authentication as well as encryption of data in transit and at rest.

  • Identifying information will be deleted before storing these commentaries as data

• Any audio samples or photographs of items used in making musical sounds will be done without identifying participants, either verbally or visually.

• The researcher will undertake to safeguard the confidentiality of music making activities, but cannot guarantee that other members of the group will do so. Please respect the confidentiality of the other members of the group by not disclosing the contents of sessions outside the group that would identify another person. Be aware that others may not respect your confidentiality.

• Email communication protocols will seek to safeguard participant confidentiality in the following ways:

  • The researcher will use their UofR email account exclusively to contact participants

  • Researcher and participant will use the term “SusMus” in the subject line of all communication for the study, to identify that the matter is related to the research

 

Right to Withdraw: 

• Participation is invited and voluntary. You may withdraw from the research project for any reason without explanation or penalty of any sort.

• Participant information, will be destroyed immediately upon their withdraw from participation in the research. Participants have until May 2025 to change their mind about their written contributions, and may request the researcher delete what they have submitted to TEAMS

 

Follow up:

• Once the researcher has analyzed all collected data, they will provide preliminary results at an OURspace repository at the University of Regina library https://ourspace.uregina.ca by typing in the researcher’s last name “Schmalenberger.”

• The researcher aims to provide preliminary results to the OURSpace repository by December 2025.

 

Questions or Concerns:  

• Contact the researcher(s) using the information at the top of page 1 of this document.

• This project was approved on ethical grounds by the University of Regina Research Ethics Board on January 27, 2025.Any questions regarding your rights as a participant may be addressed to the committee at (306-585-4775 or research.ethics@uregina.ca). 

 

Consent:

Participation in this research requires signed consent that indicates an understanding of the procedures, policies, and information in this document.

• Participants will sign their consent electronically at a secure online site (Qualtrics)

  • The consent form will be accessed at the Qualtrics site that the researcher shares with the participant, with the instruction that participants electronically sign the form prompts at the bottom.  

  • Participants will have 72 hours from receipt of their consent form to sign their consent

  • The consent form and Qualtrics will be de-identified by blocking the user’s IP address, and by moving the signatures to a OneDrive encrypted file. OneDrive will house a password protected “master list” file that correlates names to a numerical code, so as to prohibit data tracking

 

Consent will be ongoing for those who participate in more than one 90-minute sessions, with verbally re-consenting at successive sessions

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