Exploring Community, Belonging, and Student Life

You are being asked to take part in research being conducted by Stacey Greene, PhD who is an assistant professor in the Department of political science at Rutgers University. The purpose of this research is to understand what experiences lead to feelings of belonging to a community and what experiences have the opposite effect. We anticipate 100 participants will take part in the research overall.

If you agree to take part in this research, you will participate in one fThe focus group will take about 1.5 hours to complete. The first 30 minutes will be for eating and meeting other participants.

During the session, you will be part of a group of 6-10 Rutgers students who will engage in a guided conversation about your experiences and views about community on campus that will last approximately 60 minutes. The discussion will be guided by a trained researcher, who is also a student at Rutgers. The session will be audio recorded for analysis purposes, and all personal information will be kept confidential.

All efforts will be made to keep your responses confidential, but total confidentiality cannot be guaranteed.

Focus group notes will be stored in password protected online storage.

We will ask you to provide your first name or nickname during the focus group. Your name will not be stored with your responses. Instead, your responses will be assigned a participant number. Any identifiable information shared during the focus group will be removed when the audio is transcribed. When data collection is complete, your name will be changed to a pseudonym in the transcript. All identifiable information will be removed so no link will exist between your identity and your responses.

The audio recording will be deleted one year after the focus group is complete. There is no plan to delete the anonymous transcript. We plan to study the data for some time.

No information that can identify you will appear in any professional presentation or publication.

Breach of confidentiality is a risk of harm, but a data security plan is in place to minimize such a risk. Also, some questions may make you feel uncomfortable. If that happens, you can skip those questions or withdraw from the research altogether. If you decide to quit the focus group your responses will NOT be saved.

You will not be paid to take part in this research.

After a de-identified transcript has been created, responses may be used by or distributed to investigators for other research without obtaining additional informed consent from you.