Exploring young adult womxn's experiences with emergency contraception and abortion care in Northern Ontario during the COVID-19 pandemic

Welcome!

Introduction:
Thank you for your interest in participating in our study! The study is being conducted by Monica Bordin MSc(c), as a part of her master’s thesis. The project is under the supervision of Dr. Angel M. Foster, a Professor in the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Ottawa and the 2011-2016 Endowed Chair in Women’s Health Research. This study is funded through Dr. Foster’s research budget.

Survey instructions:
The purpose of this study is to learn more about the experiences of women, transgender men, gender non-binary individuals, and Two-Spirit people with emergency contraception and abortion care in Northern Ontario during the COVID-19 pandemic.

You are eligible to participate in this study if you:

Are aged 19 to 26 (inclusive),
Have used emergency contraception and/or had an abortion since January 1, 2017,
Currently live in Northern Ontario,
Sufficiently fluent in English or French to complete the survey.

This voluntary survey will take about 20 minutes to complete. You will be asked a series of questions about yourself, your reproductive health history, and your knowledge of and experiences with emergency contraception and/or abortion care. After completing the survey, you will be directed to a separate webpage where you will be asked to indicate your interest in participating in a 60-minute telephone/audio-Zoom interview and you will have the option of requesting the final results of the study. Contact information that you share on this page will be delinked to the information you provided in the survey and will be stored in a separate database. On this page you will also be able to enter your name into a draw for a $50 gift certificate to www.amazon.ca.

Privacy and confidentiality:
We will not ask you to provide personally identifying information as part of the survey. However, any information or personal details gathered in the course of the study are confidential. Some free-answer responses may be quoted, but any identifying information will be removed or masked. If you do not want any of your responses to be quoted, please indicate so during the survey by typing “please do not quote this response.” Please note that once submitted you will not be able to withdraw the information you provide given the anonymous nature of the study. Data from the survey will be stored on secure systems that can only be accessed by members of the study team for five years after the conclusion of the study, and after five years the data will be destroyed. In order to minimize the risk of security breaches and help ensure your confidentiality we recommend that you use standard safety measures such as closing your browser when you have completed the survey. If your safety is at risk, we recommend using Private Browsing mode on your device.

Risks and benefits:
There are few risks associated with participation in this study. Some of the questions that we ask may make you uncomfortable – you do not have to answer any questions that you do not want to. There are no direct benefits associated with participating in this study.

Your completion and submission of this survey will imply your consent to the study team to use the information you supply in the publication of the results of this research.

Contact information:
This study has received ethics approval from the Research Ethics Board at the University of Ottawa. If you have any questions regarding the ethical conduct of this study, you may contact: Protocol Officer for Ethics in Research, University of Ottawa, Tabaret Hall; 550 Cumberland Street, Room 154; Ottawa, ON K1N 6N5; Tel: (613) 562-5387; Email: ethics@uottawa.ca.

If you have any questions or queries please contact Monica Bordin, Study Coordinator, at ws-stu01@uottawa.ca or (613) 562-5800 ext 1798. You may also contact Dr. Foster at angel.foster@uottawa.ca

Compensation and information about the draw
To thank you for your contribution to this study, you will be given the option to enter your name into a draw to win a $50 gift card to www.amazon.ca. The draw is open to all research participants who enter their name in the draw, regardless of whether or not they complete all survey questions.

Upon completion of the study, we will randomly draw names of people who participated in the survey and the person(s) whose name is/are drawn will be informed by e-mail. If the person(s) cannot be reached 14 days from the date of the draw, the prize will be awarded to the next name that is randomly selected and so on until the prize has been awarded. The odds of winning a prize depends on the number of eligible entries received; we will award one prize per 50 survey participants. The prize must be accepted as awarded and cannot be redeemed for cash.

The name and e-mail address that you provide when you enter the draw is collected for the purpose of contacting you if your name is selected in the draw. Your name and the contact information provided will be kept confidential and then destroyed once the prizes have been awarded.

We reserve the right to cancel the draw or cancel the awarding of the prize if the integrity of the draw or the research or the confidentiality of participants is compromised. Once selected through the draw, to receive the prize you must correctly answer a skill testing question. The draw is governed by the applicable laws of Canada.

Please print a copy of this page for your records