Introduction
The purpose of this study is to explore software support for successful social communities, persuasive systems, and sustainability.
To accomplish our research, we need to monitor how people use the Stepgreen interfaces. This includes recording when each user logs in, what pages the user requests, what actions the user commits to or fulfills, what predictions the user is shown, and what social networks the user displays their progress on, among others.
Once you are a registered member of Stepgreen, we ask you to record actions that you plan to take, and tell us when you take them. This data is used to project your financial and CO2 savings, and to make predictions about what actions may appeal to you.
Your action history may be made visible to other users of the Stepgreen site, labeled with your username, but no other identifying information. Additionally, if you choose to install a plug in such as the Facebook plugin we provide, visitors to that site will be able to see your action history.
When you use the Stepgreen system, we administer one or more browser cookies. These help identify you and store your preferences. They are not shared with other sites and are not used for advertisements.
We occasionally run contests, conduct interviews or surveys, and/or implement additional features for the purpose of our research. Participation in these "extras" may require us to ask for additional data. This consent statement does not cover such additional activities. A specific consent form will be made clearly available for each activity not covered under this statement, and participation in such activities will be made optional.
Risks
You may find the following risks or discomforts from participating in this study: An important part of Stepgreen is the sharing of information amongst users of the site. Information about what actions you take may be seen by other users of the site if they know your account name or can view your MySpace page, FaceBook page, or other places where you publicly display our plug in. Additionally, we store your email address. You may opt out of receiving emails from us. You may modify this additional information and review your privacy settings at any time by clicking "My Stepgreen" when logged in to Stepgreen. Additionally, you may review a complete privacy policy here.
Compensation
You will not receive any monetary compensation for your participation in this study (your use of the site)
Benefits
There may be no personal benefit from your participation, although you may gain knowledge about environmental behavior. In addition, the knowledge received may be of value to humanity.
Rights
Your participation in this research is voluntary. You are free to stop your participation at any point. Refusal to participate or withdrawal of your consent or discontinued participation in the study will not result in any penalty or loss of benefits or rights to which you might otherwise be entitled.
The experimenter may at his/her discretion remove you from the study for any reason. In such an event, you will not suffer any penalty or loss of benefits or rights to which you might otherwise be entitled.
Confidentiality
Stepgreen does not release e-mail addresses or names to any third parties. We may share your demographic data (without your name or e-mail address attached) in research results. Furthermore, we may refer to the actions of individual users (without your name or e-mail address attached) in research results. Aside from the above, information is held as confidential as is practical within our database.
We represent users anonymously as numeric identifiers whenever possible, so that researchers do not know the real identity of the users in the data they are studying. However, we must store a mapping from email addresses to anonymous identifiers for the purpose of authenticating users at login, and resolving account issues such as forgotten passwords.
Your data will have no bearing on
your standing in relation to any department or service of the University. By
participating in the study you understand and agree that the study data may be
used by CMU. CMU may also publish and/or disclose the data to others.
CMU will not release your name, address or other
information in your consent form in connection with this study except
if required by law, subpoena, court order or other legal process.
If you have any questions about this study, you should feel free to ask them now or anytime throughout the study by contacting Professor Jennifer Mankoff at Carnegie Mellon. She can be contacted directly at jmankoff@cs.cmu.edu, by phone at +1 412 268 1295, or by mail at: Human Computer Interaction Institute, Carnegie Mellon, 5000 Forbes Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15213.
If you have any questions pertaining to your rights as a research participant, or if you would like to report objections to this study, you should contact:
IRB Chair
Regulatory Compliance Administration
Carnegie Mellon University
5000 Forbes Avenue
Warner Hall, 4th Floor
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
Email: irb-review@andrew.cmu.edu
(412) 268-1901
Carnegie Mellon University Institutional Review Board (IRB) approved the use of human participants for this study.
CMU IRB #: HS08-098
Approval Date: 3/12/08
Expiration Date: 3/11/09
This Study is funded by the National Science Foundation, which is supporting the costs of this research. Neither Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), nor Dr. Mankoff or Fussell will receive any financial benefit based on the results of the Study.
