Evolution study



INFORMATION SHEET for Evolution study!

Before you decide to take part in this study, it is important for you to understand why the research is being done and what it will involve. Please take the time to read the following information carefully and discuss it with others if you wish. A member of the research team can be contacted if there is anything that is not clear or if you would like more information. Take time to decide whether or not you wish to take part.

Purpose of the study:

We are developing a new tool to communicate with families about their baby’s development and new skills. This is an app that contains activities you can do with your baby. We are trying out a new version of the app that asks parents to tell us how their child liked each activity and whether they could do it. We are going to use this information to improve our app, and to learn more about how babies develop.

We have approached you about the study because you have a baby aged between 4-18 months old. We are inviting you to try out our app and give us feedback that could help us improve it in the future. If you would like to take part, you will be given a unique code to log into the app. You can then try out the activities suggested by the app. The app will ask some simple questions, like how much you liked the activity, how much baby liked the activity, and how baby did.

We are asking families to use the app to try to complete approximately 50 activities in total. You might complete these by spending 15-20 minutes on the app every day for 7 days or by completing 2-3 activities a day for 2-3 weeks - you can choose how many activities to do, whether to skip an activity and you can stop the study at any time. You can try out the activities wherever you like, though you will be sent weekly reminders via email to remind you to use the app.

The ‘Download the App’ section of this website provides a link from which you can download the app onto a device of your choice. You will be asked to complete a consent form before you can access the download; you will then be shown an unique ID number. Only you will know this ID number and it is important that you make a note of it; you will be asked to enter it when using the app and completing the questionnaires.

When you access the app, it will then ask you for some basic information such as your name, baby’s name, date of birth, etc. Names will not be recorded however DOB, gender and gestation information will be anonymously recorded, encrypted and sent to a secure server at Birkbeck. The feedback you provide about how your baby found the activities will also be anonymised and sent to this server.

We will also ask you to complete some questionnaires during this study. A link to access the questionnaires is available on this website and can be completed and returned online. We will ask you to enter an email address as well as your unique ID before you access the questionnaires. Your answers to the questionnaires will be linked to your unique ID and stored on a secure sever at Birkbeck. The email address will not be associated with the ID or any questionnaire answers, but will be recorded and stored secured in a separate list which will be used to send out reminder emails. This will not be shared outside of the researchers involved in this study and will only be used to communicate information about this study. You can opt-out of reminder emails by emailing teachBRITE@bbk.ac.uk.

We may write up results from this study for publication, though individual data will not be considered and there no identifying information will be included in this report.

The project has received ethical approval from the Department of Psychological Sciences Research Ethics Committee of Birkbeck University of London. For further information please contact Dr Emily Jones: teachBRITE@bbk.ac.uk.