Self-Injury Study Needs Participants - Compensation Offered

I'm going to try to post here more often. I really miss posting on this blog, and I miss helping people with the info provided here - or at least I *hope* it has helped someone.

This came from a researcher. Please spread the word if you feel like it or get the chance!

Would you like to help us understand how to help people who self-harm?

Self-injury (sometimes called “self-harm”) involves harming yourself on purpose. Some examples include cutting or burning yourself, taking an overdose of pills, or banging your head. Right now, very little is known about why people start or stop self-harming. The Personality and Emotion Research Lab (PERL), a research team from Simon Fraser University in Canada, is conducting a study to learn more about the experiences of people who self-harm, and we want your help! We are interested in how emotions, life experiences, stress and coping styles affect self-harm. We hope that this research will help other people understand more about why people self-harm and what they can do to help.

What you can do: If you want to participate in this study, you will fill out online questionnaires on self-harm, emotions, coping, symptoms, and life events. These questionnaires will take approximately 2 hours to complete.

Who can participate: We are looking for people who currently self-harm (whether you are trying to stop or not) AND those who have self-harmed in the past and quit.

What’s in it for you: Participants who complete the questionnaires will be paid $5 CAD (either online gift certificates (e.g., Amazon) or money transfers via PayPal). You can also choose to participate in our long-term study, where you will fill out a shorter version of the questionnaires every three months for two years. You will be paid $5 CAD (either online gift certificates or money) each time you complete a set of questionnaires (about 30 min each), and you will get a $15 CAD bonus once you have completed all 9 sets for a total of $60 CAD. Telling us about your experiences will give us important information on how self-harm changes over time, and could help develop and improve treatments for people who want to stop self-harming.

Please contact us at perl@sfu.ca if you are interested in participating or if you have any questions.

Thank you,

Personality and Emotion Research Laboratory (PERL)

Simon Fraser University

Department of PsychologyRCB5246, 8888
University DriveBurnaby, BC, Canada V5A 1S6