Ready, Set, Fit User Data Collection Informed Consent
Bucknell University
Purpose of this Study
The purpose of the Ready, Set, Fit (RSF) project is to bring together cultural and historical learning with wellness and community engagement sprinkled in here and there. We accomplish this by providing the user with a collection of themed-walking paths (a path of the sculptures and statues on campus is one example and another is a walk around historic Philadelphia). As the user walks along the specified path the app delivers relevant content about locations along the way as the user approaches those locations.
At the heart of this work is the rough hypothesis that bringing together learning and wellness will encourage people to 1) exercise more, 2) learn as they exercise, and 3) explore new paths and spaces that they may not have known existed. Getting at these points is complicated. At this time we want to focus on understanding who is using the app and path usage. We wish to quantify the impact of the project by exploring app use.
At this time, we have some general questions but we need to explore the data to determine other questions to ask. For example, we are currently interested who is walking each path. How many repeat walkers do we have? How many unique walkers do we have? And so on and so forth. As we gain more information from the app and our use increases (our hope) we intend to explore the data in a variety of ways along these same lines.
General Plan of the Research – Procedures
During this study, participants will download and use the RSF smartphone app to walk paths contained within the app. Per the participant’s consent, three different types of information may be collected: participant demographic information, participant path request information, and participant location data as he/she walks a path. This information will be collected directly by the app or by the project’s web server and stored on the server.
At this time the project has no conclusion date, however, we reserve the right to terminate services at any time for any reason. The number of participants is limited only by technology resources.
No deception will be involved in this project.
Participant Risks
Outdoor exercise is the basis of this project. With any physical activity there is an inherent risk of injury. Participants should understand their own physical limits and engage appropriately. Additionally, some paths may be more physically challenging than others. Participants should exercise caution and reasonable judgement when choosing and walking paths. No compensation will be provided to participants who sustain injury resulting from this research.
Participant Benefits
A core aspect of this project is participant wellness, which we hope will increase as participants exercise.
Extent of Anonymity and Confidentiality
No personal information is collected by this project. All data collected by this project is tagged with a profile ID. The profile ID is randomly generated by the app when it is first run after installation. This roughly means that each app installation instance has its own unique identifier. This approach allows us to build an anonymous profile of a user including demographic information and path walking activity, to the extent that this information is provided, but without knowing that profile ID belongs to. The profile ID value cannot be traced back to an individual phone based on the data available to us. Data will only be available to those currently working on the project.
Participant Costs
There are no direct costs to immediately using the app. The app does require an Apple or Android smartphone in order to run.
Participant Compensation
No compensation is provided by the Ready, Set, Fit project to participants.
Participation
Participation in this research is voluntary and is not required to utilize the functionality provided by the RSF app. Participants are allowed to withdraw from the project at any time. They are free to uninstall the app at any time. If a participant wishes to remove their data from our collection they should do so BEFORE deleting the app through the app settings. When the app is deleted, the profile ID is also deleted. It is impossible to regenerate a prior profile ID to remove past data. At any time a participant may enable or disable any of the data collection types through the app “settings” menu.
Investigators
Michael S. Thompson 570-577-3853 mst008@bucknell.edu
Katherine Faull 570-577-1289 faull@bucknell.edu
If you should have any questions about the research study, you may contact any of the above investigators. If you should have any questions about the protection of human research participants regarding this study, you may contact Dr. Matthew Slater, Chair Bucknell University Institutional Review Board for the Protection of Human Subjects, telephone: (570) 577-2767; email: matthew.slater@bucknell.edu.
Acceptance
By enabling collection of any of the three types of data, you:
- Affirm that you are 18 years of age or older,
- All of your questions about the project have been answered, AND
- You consent to having the respective data collected about you.
readysetfitapp.org 