Participant Information Sheet

What is the purpose of this research?

You are invited to take part in a research project that examines employee energy and recovery strategies, during and after working, and how these strategies support your motivation and wellbeing.

What are your strategies for coping with the daily grind? Do you take regular breaks or power through your workday? What about after work, how do you relax or unwind? Or do you find that work creeps into your leisure time? And finally, are these strategies worth your time? This experience sampling study aims to address these questions.

Experience sampling is a novel research method, whereby we ask you very brief questions each hour over the course of one work day, so you can tell us how it really is, as you are experiencing your work and leisure. By doing this, we aim to identify and understand the moment-to-moment factors that may effectively (or ineffectively) impact your motivation and wellbeing.

Any employee above the age of 18 who is employed in one job (i.e., part-time, full-time, or casual) and works a relatively standard 9am-5pm workday (or similar hours) can take part in this study. Please note that internet access, and the ability to complete brief surveys during work and leisure, is essential for participation.

What does my participation involve?

As part of your participation in this study, you will first complete a baseline survey about yourself and your work life, as well as nominate a suitable day to complete your experience sampling survey day.

By ‘suitable’ we mean a day of the week when you work, that you can easily access and complete the surveys (e.g., while at work, during your work breaks, during transit, and when at home).

The full study procedure is displayed in in the figure below.

Additional Information:

• Nominated Survey Day: Your nominated survey day should represent a typical working day for you.
• Survey Notifications: On your nominated survey day, you will be sent notifications to complete your hourly surveys every hour at 5 minutes to the hour. Surveys begin at 5am and end at midnight. Please feel free to use the settings on your phone or other device to silence the notifications when you are sleeping or do not want to be disturbed.
• Survey Response Window: You will have 10 minutes to complete each hourly survey. If you miss a survey window, you will be prompted to complete the next survey.
• Missing Surveys: It is ok to miss a couple of hourly surveys. Just do your best to complete as many as you practically can.
• Changing your Nominated Day: If you need to change your nominated survey day you can do so at any time from the survey portal page.
• Opting Out: You can opt out of the study at any time by selecting the ‘opt out option’ on the survey portal page, or by simply not responding to any surveys.

As thank you for participating, you will be offered the following opportunities, but you can choose to opt in or out of any or all of these as you like:

• Personalised Feedback: You will be offered a feedback report from the research team on your recovery strategies as revealed through your participation in the study. This report will also include some evidence-based strategies to help improve energy and wellbeing on a daily basis.
• Gift Card Prizes: For every survey that you complete you will be entered into a prize draw (up to 21 entries) to win one of three $200 gift cards. The winners of the gift cards will be drawn upon completion of the study, and notified via their nominated contact details provided.

Who can participate?

Those who are eligible to participate include:

• Adults (i.e., over 18 years of age);
• Are employed in one job, at one company or organisation;
• Employed on a full-time, part-time, or casual basis (i.e., at least 10 hours per week or more);
• Work primarily during the day on relatively standard ~9am-5pm schedule (i.e. no night shift workers) - it is ok if your work hours are slightly earlier or later;
• Live in Australia, within any Australian time zone;
• Can easily access the internet and complete brief surveys during work and leisure time (i.e., on a computer or mobile device).

Participation and Withdrawal

Please read this information carefully and consider your participation before agreeing to participate in the study. Your participation is voluntary, and you are able to discontinue your involvement in this study at any time without explanation or penalty. If you wish to withdraw, you may simply stop completing the surveys. If you would like the reminders to cease and/or your data to be removed from the study, please contact a member of the UQ research team. You may skip any questions in this study that you do not wish to answer. If you have any more questions about the research, please contact the research team via n.dawson@uq.edu.au.

Risks of Participation

Participation in this study should involve no physical or mental discomfort, and no risks beyond those of everyday living. Data management by the UQ research team will minimise any risk of identification by using a computer-generated code to link your survey responses.

You will be asked to respond to some questions about your experiences at work that may trigger some reflection on your work stress (e.g. “I felt burned out from my work”). If you should find any question to be invasive, offensive or distressful, you are free to omit answering or participating in that aspect of the study. If you become upset or distressed as a result of your participation in the research project please reach out to the research team. Contact details can be found at the end of this page.

Confidentiality and Security of Data

Your data will be kept completely confidential. All the survey responses you provide are kept confidential through a randomised computer-generated code, which is designed to protect the confidentiality of your data while allowing the research team to link your survey responses over time. During the study, only members of the UQ research team and the School of Psychology webmaster will know who you are for the purposes of recruitment and survey reminders. Importantly, no personally identifying information (e.g., name or contact details) will be stored with your survey responses. After your survey responses have been collected, then your data will be de-identified by the UQ research team (i.e., we will remove your unique code and any other potentially personally identifying information). All data will be safely secured using an encrypted password. De-identified data may be used in additional research and made available to other researchers through collaboration and dissemination of the research findings.

Who has reviewed the research project?

This study has been cleared in accordance with the ethical review processes of the University of Queensland (#2020001262) and Queensland University of Technology (#2000000445) within the guidelines of the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research.

You are, of course, free to discuss your participation with project staff (e-mail: s.parker@psy.uq.edu.au, or phone: +61 7 3365 6423). If you would like to speak to an officer of the University of Queensland not involved in the study, you may contact the UQ Human Research office on +61 7 3365 3924 or e-mail: humanethics@research.uq.edu.au.

Further information and who to contact

If you would like any further information concerning the project or if you have any problems which may be related to your involvement in the project, you can contact the research team via n.dawson@uq.edu.au, or a particular member of the team via below: