Consent Form
You are invited to participate in a research study conducted by Professors Daniel Benjamin (University of California-Los Angeles), Kristen Cooper (Gordon College), Ori Heffetz (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), and Miles Kimball (National Bureau of Economic Research), because you are a participant on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. This study is funded by the National Institutes of Health. Your participation is voluntary. You should read the information below, and ask questions about anything you do not understand, before deciding whether or not to participate. Please take as much time as you need to read the consent form. If you decide to participate, you will be asked to check a box to give your consent to participate. You can print this screen for your records or request a pdf copy of this consent form from the researchers.

Purpose of the Study:
We are a group of scientists gathering data to develop an index of subjective well-being.

Procedures:
If you volunteer to participate in this study, we will ask you a variety of questions to help us learn more about you and what is important in life.

You may only take this survey 1 time.

Potential Risks and Discomforts:
Because we will ask you questions that may cause you to think deeply about your life, we are required to provide you with the following hotline contact information. If you have suicidal thoughts, please contact The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 or online at www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org. 

Furthermore, if you wish to speak with a therapist for free, we recommend reading this article: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/online-therapist-for-free.

No other risks are anticipated. However, if you feel discomfort answering any question, you may choose not to answer it and still remain in the study.

Payment/Compensation for Participation: You will receive $5.75 for completing this survey. 

Timing: We expect the survey to take you approximately 45 minutes.

Survey Topics: questions about your demographics, political leanings, living situation, risk tolerance, math anxiety, life choices, health and COVID symptoms, marital, social, and serious life problems, preferred news topics and sources, pet ownership, views on government and politics, social media use, spending and wealth, feelings about diversity, language knowledge, personality, coping mechanisms, social interactions, and mood.

Confidentiality:
We will keep your records for this study confidential as far as permitted by law. The members of the research team, the UCLA Office of the Human Research Protection Program and the National Institutes of Health may access the data. 

All research data will be coded, and we will not store any personally-identifiable information without your explicit permission. Your responses will be collected over an encrypted TSL connection, the same level of security that protects your username and password when you sign on to Gmail or Amazon.com.

Since this study is conducted on Amazon Mechanical Turk, it adheres to Amazon’s MTurk Privacy Policy. To understand the privacy and confidentiality limitations associated with using MTurk, we strongly advise you to familiarize yourself with Amazon’s privacy code (https://www.mturk.com/mturk/privacynotice). In light of privacy concerns, we tried to create a study design that reduces any potential privacy risks to participants. With that in mind, you should know that any work performed on MTurk can be linked to the user’s public profile page. Thus, workers may want to restrict what information they choose to share in their public profile.

During the study, we will use your device’s IP address to identify your approximate location, using a website such as db-ip.com (https://db-ip.com/).We will keep the city, state, country, and corresponding geo-coordinates of your current IP address. We also use IP addresses to detect potentially fraudulent survey respondents. At the completion of the study, direct identifiers (your MTurk ID) will be destroyed unless explicit permission is given by you to keep your identifier so that we may send you future studies to see if you are interested in completing them. The identifiers will be stored separately from the rest of the data, which will be de-identified before analysis is conducted. The de-identified data will be stored and made available for future research use by a digital repository, such as the Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR).


Furthermore, this research is covered by a Certificate of Confidentiality from the National Institutes of Health. This means that the researchers cannot release or use information, documents, or samples that may identify you in any action or suit unless you say it is okay. They also cannot provide them as evidence unless you have agreed. This protection includes federal, state, or local civil, criminal, administrative, legislative, or other proceedings. An example would be a court subpoena. There are some important things that you need to know. The Certificate DOES NOT stop reporting that federal, state or local laws require. Some examples are laws that require reporting of child or elder abuse, some communicable diseases, and threats to harm yourself or others. The Certificate CANNOT BE USED to stop a sponsoring United States federal or state government agency from checking records or evaluating programs. The Certificate DOES NOT stop disclosures required by the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The Certificate also DOES NOT prevent your information from being used for other research if allowed by federal regulations.

Researchers may release information about you when you say it is okay. For example, you may give them permission to release information to insurers, medical providers or any other persons not connected with the research. The Certificate of Confidentiality does not stop you from willingly releasing information about your involvement in this research. It also does not prevent you from having access to your own information.

Participation and Withdrawal:
Your participation is voluntary. Your decision not to participate will not involve any penalty or loss of benefits to which you are otherwise entitled. You may withdraw your consent at any time and discontinue participation without penalty. You are not waiving any legal claims, rights or remedies because of your participation in this research study.

WHO CAN I CONTACT IF I HAVE QUESTIONS ABOUT THIS STUDY?
 
The research team:
If you have any questions, comments or concerns about the research, you can talk to the one of the researchers. Please contact: Professor Dan Benjamin at daniel.benjamin@anderson.ucla.edu
 
UCLA Office of the Human Research Protection Program (OHRPP):
 
If you have questions about your rights as a research subject, or you have concerns or suggestions and you want to talk to someone other than the researchers, you may contact the UCLA OHRPP by phone: (310) 206-2040; by email: (participants@research.ucla.edu) or by mail: Box 951406, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1406.