Psychology Research

Dear prospective participant

It is my great pleasure to welcome you to this research. The information below will provide you with some details about the study, about your participation options and rights as a participant, as well as about copyright issues related to the study's materials.

GOALS OF THE STUDY

Some general goals of this research include: (a) exploring how aspects of marital/romantic experience relate to personality characteristics, (b) learning about relationship aspects that might be of importance to couples' functioning, and (c) understanding how partners can be better helped to attain more satisfaction from their relationship.

A more specific goal of this research is to explore how people's perceptions of their spouse/romantic partner relate to personality characteristics of both self and spouse/partner. The central focus of the study concerns partners' perceptions of each other. Another major focus concerns the expectations that people may hold toward their spouse/partner and relationship.

To explore these areas, this research is developing a set of new psychological questionnaires. For this reason, some of the questionnaires you are about to complete may seem somewhat repetitive. For example, you will be asked to complete the same measure in which the items will be worded as to apply either to you or to your partner. Please, bear with it and try to provide thoughtful answers to all the items.

PARTICIPATION AND REGISTRATION

You can participate in this research as an individual or as a member of a couple. If you are the first member of your couple to participate and want to invite your spouse/partner to participate, you will be asked to create a "family password" and pass it to your spouse/partner. If your spouse/partner comes to this website and enters the password, we will be able to collate his/her responses with yours. If you are already responding to a spouse/partner's invitation, you will be prompted to validate your "family password" in a few steps ahead.

The study will be conducted through a series of online questionnaires. The time needed to complete all the measures is estimated to be about one hour. Because of the length of this study, a registration procedure has been developed that will enable you to complete your participation at more than one sitting. However, it is strongly recommended that you try completing all questionnaires within a single session.

The registration procedure was also developed to accomplish another important goal. The researcher would like to be able to contact you at a later point and to invite you to take part in a brief follow-up study (about 15 minutes). Later, the researcher would like to contact you for even briefer follow-ups to learn how you are and how your relationship is going. Keep in mind that you will never be obliged to respond to any follow-up invitations.

In addition, the registration will provide you with some convenient benefits. You will be able to recover your "family password" (if applicable). You will be personally informed about the study's group results once they are posted. To ensure your confidentiality, we will only ask you to provide your e-mail address and to create your personal password in order to register (note, that your personal password should be different from your "family password"). Of course, your e-mail address will never be shared and/or used for unrelated purposes and you can participate in the research without registering.

RIGHTS AND CONFIDENTIALITY

Your participation in the research is voluntary and you may withdraw from the study at any time without giving any explanations. All of your responses to the study's questions will be treated as confidential and will be securely protected. Your responses will not be used to identify you and they will only be seen by the researcher and his supervising professors. Neither you nor your partner nor anyone else will be able to log in and view prior responses.

RISKS AND BENEFITS

There is little risk in participating in this study; none of the questionnaires are meant to elicit traumatic memories or distressing emotions. In the unlikely event that this should happen, a free phone consultation will be provided to you by a referral therapist.

This study, however, may benefit you in several ways. You may have the satisfaction of contributing to psychology's understanding of interpersonal relationship and personality, and participating in research that may potentially benefit the field of mental health. You may benefit in having the opportunity to spend time thinking about your relationship and about yourself. You may also enjoy learning about psychological research. Finally, your participation will help me complete my final major research project to earn my degree.

ABOUT THE RESEARCHER AND DISSEMINATION OF FINDINGS

This study is being conducted by Michael Ivanov, Ph.D. The study has begun as a part of the doctoral dissertation in Clinical Psychology at the California School of Professional Psychology, Alliant International University, San Francisco. Results will be made available to psychology-related professional communities.

COPYRIGHT ISSUES

You can save or/and print this page for your records. However, all other materials of this website are copyrighted and you must not save, print, or reproduce any other pages without the written consent of the authors.

TECHNICAL ISSUES AND FEEDBACK

If you encounter any server-generated error messages while participating, please, forward them to me (you will always see a "contact" link at the bottom of each page that will open a small window; please, copy and paste the error messages along with your comments). At the end of the study, you will also be given a space to provide feedback to the researcher.

Thank you

BY CLICKING BELOW I AGREE TO THE CONDITIONS STATED ABOVE