Inperson subject recruitment presentation

H. IN-PERSON SUBJECT RECRUITMENT PRESENTATION

Evaluation of Young Marines Drug Education Program

(This presentation is to introduce the children to the study)

Hello and welcome to this brief presentation about a research study on the helpfulness of the drug abuse prevention activities in the Young Marines organization. We would like to tell you about this research study and ask you if you would like to participate in the study. To participate in this study, you must be in the 6^th grade or above and be an active participant in the Young Marines, or a new Young Marine enrollee. We will tell you how you can be involved in the study and, if you are under 18 years of age, the steps involved in getting your parent’s permission for you to participate.

The prevention of drug use among kids is an important topic. You have probably learned a little bit about this topic already in school. The research study that we are talking about today is a study that will look at the helpfulness of the Young Marines program to reduce drug use and promote a healthy, drug-free lifestyle among the Young Marines.

This study will look at Young Marine’s drug use, how you feel about drugs, how much you know about the dangers of drugs, and how you feel about yourself. If you are part of the study, we will ask you to answer questions about these things by filling out a paper survey during one of your unit meetings or possibly on the Internet. A possible risk of participating in the study may involve personal feelings of anxiety about the privacy and security of his or her information in confidentiality of completing drug and alcohol surveys. Your confidentiality responses will be protected by the using a unique code, rather than your name, and surveys completed using the Internet option are done using a method of secure encryption to protect your information. This will prevent your responses from being able to be linked to you as an individual. If you feel uncomfortable at any point in the study, you may refuse to answer any question that disturbs you, or you may discontinue participation in the study, either temporarily or permanently. The results of this study may be published in technical reports or articles, but only group information will be presented and no individual’s identity can be revealed. The main goal of this study is to ultimately better the services for youth drug education that the Young Marines provides.

Today I am just giving you a brief overview of the study, but all of the details of this study are included in this packet. At the end of this presentation, we are going to give you this information packet to take home and give to your parents. You will need your parent’s permission before you can participate in this study (if you are not 18 years of age), but it is also important to understand that we need to ask you to give your verbal assent (or approval) to participate in the study as well. Before you and/or your parent give(s) you permission to participate, it is important that you both carefully read the information in the packet and ask as many questions as necessary to be sure you (and your parent) understand what you will be asked to do. My name, phone number and email address are in the packet for your parents to contact me if they have any questions.

As I mentioned before, if you do participant in the study:

• You will be asked to fill out a survey either at a Young Marines meeting just like this, or using your own computer with Internet access.

• And, you may be asked to fill out a second survey about 3 months after the first survey. This survey needs to be filled out using your own computer with Internet access.

It is important for you to understand that this research study is being done by the Naval Health Research Center; this is a group that is totally separate from the Young Marines. Your answers to the survey questions will be kept confidentialprivate. They will not go to your unit leaders or anyone in the Young Marines, or to your parents—only to the researchers at NHRC. You will not be identified by your responses.

If you decide to participate or not to participate in this study, this will not affect your standing in the Young Marines in any way. Participating in this study is voluntary which means that you do not have to do it.

If you return the parent permission form (or your own signed form, if you are at least 18 years old), you will be mailed a free movie rental gift card (a $4.50 value) from us. You’ll get this card whether or not you choose to participate, or your parent allows you to participate in the study.

As a reminder, what we would like you to do is to:

1. Take the study information packet home and discuss it with your parent.

2. Decide whether or not you wish to give your verbal assent (or approval) to participate in the study (and sign the permission form if you are at least 18 years old).

3. If you are not 18 years of age, and your parent allows you to participate, your parent needs to read and sign the parent permission form.

4. You need to turn the form in right away at your next Unit meeting in a special, marked box, or, you or your parent can mail the form back to us in the envelope provided.

Then, we will let you know when the survey will be given to your Unit, or we will email you or your parent to notify you of when you may take the survey on the internet.

Thanks for listening!

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