This study is being conducted by Professor Aimée Morrison of the Department of English at the University of Waterloo, Canada.
You are being invited to participated in a research study. We hope to learn the techniques that bloggers use to protect their anonymity or their personal privacy when they write on the Internet.
If you decide to volunteer, we will ask you to answer some questions about your own writing practices. For example, you might be asked if, in your writing, you use a screen name that is different from your real name.
You may not benefit personally from your participation in this study. However, the information obtained from this research may provide useful information to scholars about how writers specifically go about safeguarding their anonymity or their privacy: this has not really been studied before.
There is no anticipated risk to your participation in this study; your participation is anonymous and your answers to the survey questions will be held in confidence. Participation in this study is expected to take 15-20 minutes of your time. Your participation is voluntary and you are free to quit the survey at any time, or to only answer those questions you wish to, leaving blank those you do not wish to answer.
All information collected from participants in this study will be aggregated. Thus, your individual responses will not appear in any report, publication or presentation resulting from this study. The survey data, with identifying information removed, will be kept for a period of three years and will be stored on a secure web site; after this time the data will be deleted.
If you have any questions about participation in this study, please feel free to contact Dr. Morrison at 519-888-4567, x37533 or by email at ahm@uwaterloo.ca.
This project has been reviewed by, and received ethics clearance through, the Office of Research Ethics at the University of Waterloo. In the event you have any comments or concerns resulting from your participation in this study, please contact Dr. Susan Sykes at 1-519-888-4567, x36005 or ssykes@uwaterloo.ca.