Newlyweds research study at UT- Earn $445

Re: Newlyweds research study at UT- Earn $445

• reddie36

  

  April 2010 edited December 2011

  FYI - this is a real thing. FI and I are signed up to participate. The girls running this study are real nice, and it seems like it will benefit the research community a great deal.

  ~ Trish Finfer
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• somethingsweeting member

  

  April 2010 edited December 2011

  Gah, I'm gonna be the black sheep here. DH and I signed up for this and started filling out the extensive questionnaire to bring to our first meeting. The questions made me extremely uncomfortable and just gave me a general sick feeling in my stomach. DH had the same reaction so we ended up calling and canceling our participation. Some friends of our who are doing the program says that they want to record some of your fights and disagreements. Our friends didn't mind this, but DH and I just felt weird about it. Make sure you read all the documents before your first meeting and both of you feel comfortable about participating. If you do, great! That's a lot of money. Just know what you're getting into.
  

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• lizkenes member

  

  April 2010 edited December 2011

  Thanks, reddie36! We are a real research study currently happening at UT Austin and are funded by the National Science Foundation!

  To clarify for potentially interested couples, and as we tell all couples before they come in for their first interview, we do ask you to engage in 2 sets of videotaped interactions with each other when you come into our lab. These are both about topics of your choice (we never make you discuss anything that would make you feel uncomfortable if you don't want to) and we certainly do not ask you to fight.
  
  These conversations are completely private (nobody is in the room during them, or watching or listening as they occur) and confidential (as with any information you provide during the study, we use participant numbers and never your names to identify the videos, protecting your privacy and anonymity). Finally, only 2-3 individuals on the research team will ever see these videos in order to code them for different skills and communication techniques we look for. This type of activity is actually very common for marital and relationships research.
  
  As far as the questionnaires are concerned, we do ask for extensive background information from our couples the first time around (again all anonymous and confidential), but the questionnaires only get shorter after that first set. We ask questions about you individually- you personality, work ethic, etc. and about your marriage- how well you feel you and your partner communicate, work together, solve problems, what areas of your relationship still may need improvement, etc. All these questions have been standardized in past marital research studies and use number scales (ratings from 1-7 for instance) to keep from delving too deeply into your personal lives (as perhaps, open responses might).
  
  

  We’d say most, if not all, of our participating couples greatly enjoy their time with us and often tell us that the activities involved in their participation gave them the opportunity to think about and discuss a variety of topics concerning their marriage that they may have missed without participating.

  
  Hope this information helps!
  
  Please contact us with any further questions at 512-475-7504, or austinmarriageproject@gmail.com. See austinmarriageproject.com for even more detail.

  Thank you!
  
  

   

  Liz

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