Letter of Information / consent form
for PARTICIPANTS IN THE “Learning to dance with a partner” study
Director, MIMM: Dr. Laurel Trainor, Ph.D. ljt@mcmaster.ca
Lead Investigator: Dr. Martin Miguel, Ph. D. miguem3@mcmaster.ca
Research Coordinators: Sally Stafford livelab@mcmaster.ca
Susan Marsh-Rollo marshse@mcmaster.ca
Sponsors: SSHRC
Purpose of the Study: We are investigating how inexperienced participants learn to follow haptic and visual cues in partner dancing.
Description of the Research:
We may ask you some questions regarding your dance experience, dancing preferences, music training, demographics and physical training. You will then be instructed on how to perform simple dance steps. You will then perform these steps in a partnered fashion by holding hands with another participant while listening to music. You will be asked to perform the dance steps with multiple participants you are meeting for the first time in the experiment. You will be asked to make various judgements or provide responses about the dances performed.
Before you perform the dance steps, you will be fitted with the following sensors in groups from 1 to 12:
- To capture your motion, you will have markers placed on your skin or clothing using medical grade double sided tape. A video recording will record the position of the markers over time. After, we can generate a 3D model of your motion. It is important that you wear tight fitting clothing in order to have the sensors properly map your movement. It is also important that long hair is properly tied-up to prevent it from covering any markers.
- This study will be recorded using Video Cameras and Microphones within the theatre that will be used for later analysis.
The entire process will take around 2 hours. If at any time during the process you need assistance, please raise your hand and a research assistant will come to help you.
Potential Harms: The risks of participating are minimal. You may choose to not answer questions on the questionnaires if they make you feel uncomfortable. If you are in a room with many other participants, other participants will know that you participated. Slight discomfort or embarrassment may be experienced from a new activity such as partaking in a partner dancing lesson.
Potential Benefits: The results will not benefit you directly, but will increase our understanding of how people interact, using music and performance as a model, which is important for understanding human behaviour and building healthy societies. You will receive a brief lesson on blues dancing and will be exposed to a (possibly) new activity, partner dancing.
Compensation: For participating in this study, you will receive $34 for completion of the study.
Confidentiality: As you are in a room with many other people, other participants will see that you are also a participant. However, your responses will be identifiable only by a participant code and the researcher will not know who corresponds to what participant code. All potentially identifying data will be kept confidential and securely stored in the LIVELab and may be used for future research. Data may be uploaded to an online repository and made publicly available; however all raw survey data will go through a process of determining potential identifiability and an anonymous dataset created prior to sharing.
Motion capture recordings will contain video that includes your identity; however, these videos will not be distributed without your consent and will remain secured on the LIVELab servers.
Recordings will contain video that includes your identity; however, these videos will be encrypted during transmission and stored on password-protected servers. Videos will never be distributed without your consent.
Confidentiality will be respected and no information that discloses your identity will be released or published without your consent, unless required by law (for example, laws pertaining to the protection of vulnerable individuals including children). Data collected by LimeSurvey is stored on secure servers at McMaster University. All data and recordings will remain in Dr. Trainor's lab, stored in de-identified form for possible future analysis, until such time as they are destroyed.
Participation and Withdrawal: Participation in research is voluntary. If you choose to participate, you can skip any question you prefer not to answer and are free to withdraw from the study at any time without any negative consequences, even after signing this form. In the case of withdrawal, all your data will be destroyed. If you decide after the session you wish to withdraw your data you may do so, up until Oct 30, 2024, when I expect to be writing the results of this study.
Information about the Study Results: Any results from this study that are published in the future can be accessed via https://livelab.mcmaster.ca/. You can also indicate in the consent section if you wish to receive newsletters summarizing the results of this and other studies conducted in the LIVELab.
Ethics Review: This study has been reviewed by the McMaster University Research Ethics Board and received ethics clearance. If you have concerns or questions about your rights as a participant or about the way the study is conducted, please contact:
McMaster Research Ethics Board
Telephone: (905) 525-9140 ext. 23142
E-mail: ethicsoffice@mcmaster.ca
Contact: If you have any questions about this study, you may contact the lab via email livelab@mcmaster.ca, or by telephone: 905-525-9140 ext 25483 or the Lead Investigator Martin Miguel (miguem3@mcmaster.ca)
There are 5 questions in this survey.
