What You Will Be Asked to Do in the Research:
A survey will be administered to obtain data. The survey will take 10minutes to complete. The survey will ask you about yourself (demographical information) and your experiences with community gardening (length of travel to community gardens, equity, diversity, inclusion and accessibility).
Risks and Discomforts:
There is a risk of minimum emotional discomfort from questions asked on the survey. Some of the topics of questions in the survey may be uncomfortable to discuss. To mitigate the risk, you do not need to respond to any survey questions you are uncomfortable with and can end the survey at any time.
Benefits of the Research and Benefits to You:
Although participants may not experience a direct benefit from participation, the research will benefit the community gardening network by understanding successes and challenges. In addition, recommendations provided by the research may help increase who benefits from community gardening in building safe and diverse spaces for all community members (i.e. accessibility requirements, key equity considerations).
Voluntary Participation and Withdrawal:
Your participation in the study is completely voluntary and you may choose to stop participating at any time. Your decision not to volunteer, to stop participating, or to refuse to answer particular questions will not influence the nature of the ongoing relationship you may have with the researchers or study staff nature of your relationship with York University either now, or in the future.
In the event you withdraw from the study, all associated data collected will be immediately destroyed wherever possible. Should you wish to withdraw after the study, you will have the option to also withdraw your data up until the analysis is complete.
Confidentiality:
Unless you choose otherwise all information you supply during the research will be held in confidence and unless you specifically indicate your consent, your name will not appear in any report or publication of the research.
The information will be collected through a survey tool. Your data will be safely stored on a hard drive that is kept in a locked cabinet and only research staff/research team members will have access to this information. All data will be destroyed after two years on February 28th, 2028. Confidentiality will be provided to the fullest extent possible by law.
The data collected in this research project may be used anonymously by members of the research team in subsequent research investigations exploring similar lines of inquiry. Such projects will still undergo ethics review by the HPRC, our institutional REB. Any secondary use of anonymized data by the research team will be treated with the same degree of confidentiality and anonymity as in the original research project.
Please note that the survey is being conducted with the help of Google Forms, a company not affiliated with York University and with its own privacy and security policies that you can find at:
https://transparency.google/our-policies/product-terms/google-forms/ . There is always a risk during web-based transmission that data can be intercepted by a third party (e.g., government agencies, hackers) and thus the confidentiality and privacy cannot be guaranteed.
Please note that it is the expectation that participants agree not to make any unauthorized recordings of the content of a data collection session.
Questions About the Research?
If you have questions about the research in general or about your role in the study, please feel free to contact Dr. Reisenleitner either by telephone at (416) 736-5220, or by e-mail
mrln@yorku.ca or Dr. Quirt either by telephone at (416) 736-5220, extension 20872 or by e-mail
mquirt@yorku.ca. In addition, you can contact the Department of Humanities at (416) 736-5158. This research has received ethics review and approval by the Human Participants Review Sub-Committee, York University’s Ethics Review Board and conforms to the standards of the Canadian Tri-Council Research Ethics guidelines. If you have any questions about this process, or about your rights as a participant in the study, please contact the Manager, Research Ethics in the Office of Research Ethics, York University (e-mail
ore@yorku.ca). This office oversees the ethical conduct of research studies and is not part of the study team. Everything that you discuss will be kept confidential.
