Informed participation

Our team will inform the participants about the purpose of our research, we will inform them about what our research is about and what we are trying to find out in our research. We are interested in the youth’s feelings and thoughts about their re-entry into society and their experiences while they were incarcerated.  We will inform our participants about the information they will be sharing and how it will be used.

Voluntary participation

We will inform the participants if the can opt out of the research at anytime they feel like they no longer want to participate. The participation is voluntary not mandatory and any information shared during the time they participated will be destroyed if they do not wish to have this information shared. We will ask our participants to sign a contract stating that they no longer what to participate in our research project and we will allow to express their thoughts and ideas freely.

Confidentiality and anonymity

We will ask our participants to sign a consent form in order for us to use the data collected. All names will be omitted in order to protect the identities of our participants. Since we are asking about personal information about crimes that the teens were involved in  we want to kept their identities private . Any recorded interviews we collect will be keep in a locked cabinet and any written data will be shredded after we collect the data that we need.

Protection from harm

With our research there are potential risks involved such as emotional hurt perhaps when the participants recall any experiences that they had while being incarcerated. They may also share important feelings about how they are copping with being back in the general population, we want to make sure our participants are safe and have a safe space to share their experiences. 

Participation of children

The teengers who want to participate can do so by signing up to participate in recorded interview sessions with the researchers . The participants  involved in the research can opt out at any given time if they feel uncomfortable or don’t want to participate anymore. They will be given every opportunity to say what they are comfortable with and will have the final say in the amount of information they would like to share. 

Impartiality

Potential bias that may happen could be how we interpret the data, the answers to the questions may be interpreted differently by the children. A researchers we feel a certain way about the topic and may be bias and the children may have a completely different way of expressing their thoughts and ideas on the topic.

Data security and  Dissemination and use of research

In ensuring that data containing participants’ information is kept confidential, our team has decided to use password protected USB sticks. When we conduct recorded interviews and we will only use participants’ initials and no other identifiable details.  When the interviews are recorded and transferred onto the USB’s  we will ensure that they are kept in a lock box.

We plan to protect these USB’s by ensuring that they are locked away in our filing cabinets and only our research team will have access to keys and codes.  The master key will be kept in the office of the research director’s office.

For additional security and anonymity of participants we plan to remove any identifiable data from the interviews, possibly use pseudonyms, and transfer to the USB stick that is password protected. We want to do this to separate personally identifying data.

Our research might reveal the truth about the juvenile justice system and weather or not it actually helps the youth offenders. During out interviews other issues may arise that we may be interested in researching further.

We will adhere to the terms of the participants’ consent.

Adrianna, Sharni, Ayanna