Study Participants: How It All Works

Thank you for your interest in the American Family Health Study! Here is how participation in the AFHS works.

A. If you provided us with an email address and were randomly selected from your household when completing the initial screening questionnaire:

1. If you completed the screening questionnaire online, we will ask you if you’d like to continue with the survey questions online right away. If not, we will send you an email at a later date, providing a web link for the survey.
2. You will receive an email from [email protected] including a link to the survey. You can click on the link to complete the survey, and you will be able to complete the survey in parts at your convenience. You can also complete the survey on your smartphone, if you have one.
3. We will mail you our token of appreciation (up to $70!) after you complete each part of the survey.

That’s it!

B. If you did not provide us with an email address, or someone else was randomly selected from your household:

1. The selected individual in your household will receive correspondence in the mail from the University of Michigan including a link to the survey. That person can enter this link into any web browser, and complete the survey online. They can also complete the survey on a smartphone, if desired. They will be able to complete the survey in parts at their convenience.
2. We will mail them our token of appreciation (up to $70!) after they complete each part of the survey.

That’s it!

C. If we did not receive a response from your household online after receipt of the initial email or letter:

1. The selected individual in your household will receive correspondence in the mail from the University of Michigan that includes paper versions of the survey questions. That person can respond to the questions on this survey by using a pen or pencil to select the appropriate responses.
2. When they mail back their responses to the survey questions, we will send them our token of appreciation (up to $70!). They are welcome to contact us and indicate their preference to complete the survey online at any point.

That’s it!

 

 

Who Will Use Your Information?

We truly value all of our randomly selected participants, and your responses will be very important for generating high-quality estimates describing the health of American individuals and families. Your participation in this survey is strictly voluntary, and you can opt out at any point. Any information that you provide will be used by researchers to answer important scientific questions about the health of American families. The researchers using these data will never have access to any information that can be used to personally identify survey respondents (names, addresses, birthdays, etc.), and any studies using these data will only present aggregate information obtained by analyzing your survey responses. If you would like more information about how the survey data will be used to inform American public health policies and programs, please email [email protected].

Will My Information Be Secure?

All information that you share with us, either online or via mail, will be encrypted and securely stored on password-protected servers at the University of Michigan. Researchers accessing the data collected in this study will need to complete special data user agreements, where they demonstrate how they will be using the data to answer scientific questions. Your confidentiality in responding is extremely important to us, and the data will not be accessible to outside individuals in any other way.

What If I Have Questions? Can I View the Study Results?

We would be more than happy to answer any questions that you have about this study. We are also happy to share the results of any studies that use these data with our study participants. If you have questions about any aspect of this study, or you would like to see the results of studies that have used these data when they become available, please send an email to [email protected], or call 877-556-1542.