Letter of Information for Implied Consent

Project Title: Targeted and Unprotected: Cyberbullying and Identity-Based Harassment experienced by Indigenous Faculty and Staff in Canadian Post-Secondary Institutions An Exploratory National Survey

University of Victoria HREB #26-0237

Welcome! You are invited to participate in a research study about identity-based online harassment experienced by First Nations, Inuit, and Métis staff and faculty at Canadian post-secondary institutions. Please read this letter of consent carefully before deciding whether to participate. Your participation is entirely voluntary.

Study Contact Information

Questions about the research: Dr. Renée Monchalin, Principal Investigator, Associate Professor, School of Public Health and Social Policy, University of Victoria; Email: rmonchalin@uvic.ca

Concerns about your rights as a research participant: Human Research Ethics Office, University of Victoria. Email: ethics@uvic.ca; Phone: 250-472-4545; Reference: HREB #26-0237

Before you begin: support resources

Because this survey asks about experiences of online harassment, it may bring up difficult feelings. A list of mental health and crisis support resources is provided at the end of the survey and is also available here. You are welcome to exit the survey at any point, with no consequence.

Who is conducting this research?

This study is led by Dr. Renée Monchalin, Associate Professor in the School of Public Health and Social Policy at the University of Victoria. Dr. Monchalin is Métis (Sault Ste. Marie) and a citizen of the Métis Nation of Ontario. There are no co-investigators, research assistants, or other personnel on this study. Dr. Monchalin is the only person who will have access to the survey data.

Purpose of this study

This exploratory study has three aims:

  • To document the forms, frequency, and impacts of identity-based online harassment experienced by First Nations, Inuit, and Métis staff and faculty at Canadian post-secondary institutions since January 2021;

  • To produce evidence that may inform institutional protocols and supports for Indigenous staff and faculty targeted online; and

  • To help reduce isolation among Indigenous post-secondary staff and faculty experiencing these attacks by documenting that this is a shared experience.

Why you are being asked to participate

You are eligible to participate if you meet all of the following:

  • You are 19 years of age or older;

  • You self-identify as Métis, First Nations (with or without status), and/or Inuit (self-identification only; no documentation required);

  • You are currently employed, or have been employed at any point between January 2021 and the present, as staff or faculty (including academic, administrative, technical, and contract roles) at a Canadian university or college;

  • You have experienced online harassment, cyberbullying, or related identity-based attacks targeting your Indigenous identity at some point between January 2021 and the present; and

  • You are able to complete an English-language online survey.

What participation involves

If you agree to participate, you will complete a one-time anonymous online survey. The survey takes approximately 15 to 20 minutes. You may skip any question, take breaks, or exit at any time before submission. There are no follow-up sessions, interviews, or additional surveys.

Voluntary participation and right to withdraw

Your participation is entirely voluntary. You may exit the survey at any time before submission with no consequence; if you exit before submitting, your incomplete responses will be discarded and will not be used in the study.

Important note about withdrawal after submission. Because the survey is fully anonymous and the Principal Investigator cannot link any submitted response to any individual, it is not possible to withdraw your responses once you have submitted the survey. Please consider this before you submit.

Possible risks and discomforts

This study involves minimal risk. The main foreseeable risk is emotional or psychological discomfort from reflecting on experiences of online harassment. To minimize this risk, the survey is anonymous, all questions are skippable, and Indigenous-led mental health and crisis resources are provided at the end of the survey, and at the beginning of this consent form. You are encouraged to complete the survey in a private and unobserved location.

Possible benefits

There is no guaranteed direct benefit to you. Possible benefits include reduced isolation through participating in research that documents a shared but currently invisible experience, the opportunity to contribute anonymously to evidence that may inform institutional protocols and supports, and reflective engagement with the strengths-based questions at the close of the survey. More broadly, this work aims to inform Canadian post-secondary institutions about a phenomenon that currently lacks a formal evidence base or policy response.

Compensation

No compensation, incentive, or reimbursement is provided for participation. Your participation is voluntary and motivated only by your own willingness to contribute.

Anonymity

This study is fully anonymous. No identifying information is collected at any point. Specifically:

  • Your name, email address, and IP address are not collected. The survey collector is set to “Anonymous Responses,” which suppresses IP-address logging.

  • You are not asked how you heard about the study.

  • Demographic categories in the survey (such as region, age range, and broad role category) are deliberately broad so that no individual can be identified by a combination of demographic responses.

  • The Principal Investigator will not be able to identify which individuals have participated or chosen not to participate, and cannot link any survey response to a known individual.

Open-text questions and identifier scrubbing

Some questions invite open-text responses. Please do not include identifying information in your open-text responses, specifically, do not include your own name, the names of other individuals, specific institution names, or specific platform handles. Before any open-text material is quoted or excerpted in any publication or other output, the Principal Investigator will screen the responses for inadvertently included identifying information and will redact or paraphrase accordingly. No verbatim quotation will be used without this screening.

Data storage during the collection period

During the data-collection period, your responses are stored on UVic’s institutional SurveyMonkey account. SurveyMonkey’s servers are located in the United States. The U.S. Freedom Act notice required by UVic is as follows:

“Please be advised that this research study includes data storage in U.S.A. As such, there is a possibility that information about you that is gathered for this research study may be accessed without your knowledge or consent by the U.S. government, in compliance with the U.S. Freedom Act.”

Because the survey collects no identifying information (no name, email, or IP address), any data subject to such an access request would consist of de-identified workplace survey responses that could not be tied to a specific participant.

Data storage after the collection period

Once the survey closes, all responses will be exported to CSV and SPSS files and stored on the Principal Investigator’s UVic OneDrive account, which is institutionally managed, encrypted at rest and in transit, and access-controlled through UVic credentials with multi-factor authentication. No copies are stored on personal devices, personal cloud accounts, or USB drives. The SurveyMonkey copy of the dataset is permanently deleted from the SurveyMonkey platform once the export to UVic infrastructure is verified.

Data retention and destruction

The dataset will be retained for a maximum of five years following completion of the study, in accordance with UVic research records management policy. The dataset will not be deposited in any external repository, library, community agency, or Indigenous organization archive. At the end of the retention period, the CSV and SPSS files will be securely deleted from UVic OneDrive (including permanent removal from the OneDrive recycle bin) and from the Principal Investigator’s UVic-issued laptop using secure file deletion.

How findings will be shared

Findings from this study will be shared through:

  • Peer-reviewed journal articles, academic conference presentations, and potentially a peer-reviewed book or book chapter, reporting aggregate findings;

  • A plain-language brief for university and college administrators and Indigenous-serving offices, made publicly available through the Principal Investigator’s institutional webpage; and

  • A follow-up post on the Principal Investigator’s personal LinkedIn account.

If you wish to see what comes of this work, you are invited to visit the Principal Investigator’s public University of Victoria faculty webpage, where updates and links to any peer-reviewed outputs from this study will be posted as they become available:

https://www.uvic.ca/health/publichealthsocialpolicy/faculty-staff/

All findings will be reported in aggregate. Where open-text excerpts are quoted, identifying details will be removed or generalized first. The Principal Investigator may also use these data to inform the design of a larger, formally community-partnered follow-on study, if findings indicate one is warranted.

Indication of consent

Once you have read the full contents of this letter of consent, you are invited back to the Survey be exiting out of this webpage. You will be asked to click the box under the consent form link to confirm you have read this letter of consent in its entirety.

By clicking the checkbox and proceeding to the survey, you confirm that:

  • You have read and understood the information in this Letter of Consent;

  • You meet all eligibility criteria for the study;

  • You understand that participation is voluntary and that you may exit at any time before submission;

  • You understand that the survey is fully anonymous and that responses cannot be withdrawn once submitted;

  • You understand that data will be stored on U.S.-based SurveyMonkey servers during the collection period and may be accessed by the U.S. government under the U.S. Freedom Act, as described above;

  • You freely agree to participate.

Once you have read and understood the information above, agree that you meet the eligibility criteria, and freely agree to participate in this study, please exit this page and return to the survey.

You may print or save a copy of this Letter of Information for your records before proceeding.