TEMPLATE: Generic Research Project Student Or Staff

Explanatory Statement

Title: Decisional styles and willingness to read and reply to messages

This information sheet is for you to keep.

My name is Scott Shirren and I am conducting a research project with Dr. Jim Phillips a lecturer in the Monash University School of Psychology and Psychiatry towards a Post Graduate Diploma in Psychology at Monash University. I am conducting this research to find out whether decisional styles have an effect on the willingness to read and reply to emails whilst at work.

As text based electronic messaging is cheap it has become pervasive. Although email is primarily used within an organisation as a cheap and efficient method of disseminating business information it is also used for purposes of distraction (e.g. personal emails, jokes, Spam). Organisational messaging is also being developed by organisations as a tool for influence, in the form of workplace reminders and emergency alert systems. The present study seeks to understand how decisional styles influence the ways in which people view and respond to messaging.

Decisional styles describe the way that people respond to important decisions. There are four decisional styles being investigated in the course of this research: Vigilance, Hypervigilance, Procrastination and Buckpassing. Individuals will use each of the 4 decisional styles depending on difficulty of a task, timeframe, self-efficacy and the importance of the task itself.

I am seeking to recruit volunteers who are currently working in a role where they send and receive email throughout their work day. If you choose to participate in this study you will be invited to keep a communication diary (an automatically totalling Excel spreadsheet) for a period of 5 working days which will record how many personal and work related communications you send and receive as well as a rating of how quickly you read and replied to messages. Each entry in the communication diary will take less than 3 seconds to record. At the end of the 5 days you will be asked to fill out an anonymous questionnaire which will determine your decisional style, decisional self esteem, anxiety, depression, stress and the totals of each type of read/reply response calculated by the communication diary. The whole process of using the communication diary and answering the questions in the survey will take approximately 30 minutes of your time spread out over 5 days. Surveys that do not have the communication diary totals filled out will be deleted.

As the communication diary is filled out during work time, you may need to check with your employer if it is alright to do so. Although we do not anticipate that responding to the questions will be upsetting, it is possible that some participants might feel uncomfortable answering questions about anxiety, depression and stress. If you do feel uncomfortable at any stage, feel free to stop the questionnaire (simply close your browser). You may also wish to contact one of the following resources if you want to discuss any feelings raised by the questionnaire:

Although you may not personally benefit from participating in this study, your contribution will assist in further exploring factors related to the use of email within an organisation and potentially lead to new insights in how employees use their email for work and personal communications.

All questionnaires and data produced by participants will be anonymous. Storage of the data collected will adhere to the University regulations and kept on University premises in a locked cupboard/filing cabinet for 5 years. A report of the study may be submitted for publication, but individual participants will not be identifiable in such a report. Only aggregate data will be reported, nothing that will identify an individual participant will be released.

Being in this study is voluntary and you are under no obligation to consent to participation. However, if you do consent to participate, you may only withdraw prior to the questionnaire being submitted

To participate in this research project please go to the web address http://tiny.cc/sshi34 where you will find more information and a link to the questionnaire and the communication diary.

If you would like to be informed of the overall research findings, please contact Scott Shirren on . You do not have to participate in the research to have the finding sent to you. The findings will be available early 2011.

Thank you.
Scott Shirren and Dr. Jim Phillips.

School of Psychology and Psychiatry

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