Thank you for considering helping us with our research project. We encourage representation from people from a broad cross-section of the global outdoor and adventure programs sector who have experienced a serious incident at their place of work.
We invite leadership and staff, including instructors, who have been directly involved at the incident site or those involved peripherally (e.g., as a friend, course director, staff, or administrator, but not at the incident site) in a serious outdoor incident (as you define it) to answer questions about aspects of your experience and emotions after the incident.
It takes approximately 25 minutes to complete the questionnaire. A shortcoming of this survey format is that if a respondent is on a page for a while their browser might time out. Therefore we have a number of page breaks to help avoid that.
At the end of the survey we asked if you would like to be interviewed. We plan to interview about 30 people to get deeper input about the effects of being involved in a serious incident.
We identified these possible risks to participation:
· Transmission of information over the Internet presents a possible risk of a breach of confidentiality.
· If a question has a low response rate OR if a response has specificity in indicating an aspect of you or your program it could be identifiable to others familiar with you or your institution. To protect participants’ anonymity, the study is designed to report data in aggregate.
· Thinking and responding to questions about a serious outdoor and adventure programming incident that you were involved in—even peripherally—can bring up unpleasant or possibly disturbing reactions.
Benefits to your participation include knowing that you have helped to understand the prevalence and extent of emotional, physical, or spiritual effects to instructors, course directors, or administrators and other staff involved in serious incidents in outdoor and adventure education programs.
For general questions or concerns, or if you would like to give input about the research, please contact Dr. Denise Mitten, (231) 598-7477, or dmitten@prescott.edu. If you have questions about your rights as a research participant or other questions and can’t reach the researcher, or want to talk to someone other than the researcher, you may contact Dr. Gretchen Gano, the Human Subjects Committee Co-Chairperson, at gretchen.gano@prescott.edu.
Participation is voluntary and you can stop at any time. Because of the topic, you are encouraged to monitor your emotions and stop the survey if you feel overwhelmed. There are a range of external agencies that we encourage you to contact if you need. These include Lifeline (Australia - 13 11 14), Crisis Counsellor (USA - Text HOME to 741741), Shout (UK - Text SHOUT to 85258).
If you consent to participate in this research study, please click the NEXT button below. To ensure the survey works, all questions are compulsory. Please also note we are intentionally requesting demographic information--this may seem irrelevant to some however we are using this data to gain a better understanding of who in the outdoor sector have been affected by serious incidents. Please do not close your browser or you may lose your data.
If you prefer not to participate, please simply close this window in your browser.
Thank you
