We appreciate that you will be sharing highly sensitive information with us, and that you may have concerns about this. You may also feel apprehensive about discussing painful memories and how this will make you feel. Given the difficult nature of the project, we are putting every possible precaution in place to mitigate the possible after-effects of taking part in the research.
Your Confidentiality
- Any references to any identifying information will be removed prior to the findings being shared, published or discussed in any external context.
- We will also carefully consider indirect key identifiers (information which in combination may uniquely identify data subjects). An example of this is how knowing a participant’s gender, occupation, and their particular set of circumstances around gambling may be unique to a particular individual. We will handle this by using techniques such as data aggregation (e.g. instead of saying a participant is from Edinburgh we would say they were from Scotland), and pseudonyms.
- More advanced anonymisation may be required in cases which are sensitive because of external factors, such as ongoing court cases. We will discuss this with you and take care to make sure no information is shared about you in any form that you don’t want in the public domain.
- We will be flexible throughout the data collection process with how things are done. Some participants may prefer to be interviewed by someone they already know well; others may prefer to speak to a researcher they have never met. Similarly, some participants may need the support network of other participants which they already know from outside of the research, whereas others will feel more comfortable treating the research as a standalone activity. All of this will be discussed and pre-agreed on an individual basis.
Reporting Concerns
- If you experience something during your participation in the research which you would like to raise as a concern, in the first instance you are encouraged to contact someone from Gambling With Lives or GamLearn that you are familiar with and feel comfortable speaking to.
- Both organisations will be providing wrap-around support before, during, and after focus groups and interviews. If you become involved with the project in a different capacity, you can also expect this support.
- You can also contact the designated safeguarding contact for this project, Stephen Sharman at stephen.p.sharman@kcl.ac.uk, or an independent ombudsman at ethics@lincoln.ac.uk. The project has been approved by an independent ethics committee at the university of Lincoln, Ethics Reference: 2023_16661.
Awareness of Researcher Roles
- The research team meets regularly and debriefs after every session of data collection to discuss what did and did not go well. We request feedback from participants and act on it for future data collection.
- We regularly challenge and addressing any biases that the research team may be holding.
- All research team members involved in working with participants have active DBS checks and appropriate training.