Informed Consent of Participation

You are invited to participate in the online study of students from University Regensburg. The research is supervised by Dr. David Elsweiler at the University of Regensburg. Please note:

• Your participation is entirely voluntary
• Based on pre-tests, the online study should take around 30 minutes
• We will record personal demographics (age, gender, etc.)
• We may publish our results from this and other sessions in our reports, but all such reports will be confidential and will neither include your name nor cannot be associated with your identity
• If you wish to take part, make sure you are using a desktop computer or laptop. The experiment is not optimised for mobile devices.
• Also make sure that your browser allows Javascript and Cookies since they are required for the study to function properly.

If you have any questions or complaints about the whole informed consent process of this research study or your rights as a human reserach subject, please contact (email listed below). You should carefully read the information below. Please take as much time as you need to read the consent form.

1. Purpose and Goal of this Research

The purpose of this study is to examine how users make credibility decisions on the web. The goal of this study is to understand the difference between only rating snippets and getting access to the page itself. Your participation will help us achieve this goal. The results of this research may be presented at scientific or professional meetings or published in scientific proceedings and journals.

2. Participation and Compensation

Your participation in this online study is completely voluntary. You may withdraw and discontinue participation at any time without justification for withdrawing. If you decline to participate or withdraw from the online study, no one on the campus will be informed.

3. Procedure

After confirming your informed consent you will:

1. be presented with a short pre-study questionnaire
2. asked to rate the credibility of search engine results
3. asked to answer some demographic questions

The complete procedure of this online study will last approximately 30 minutes.

Please do the survey in one take! And most importantly do not go back to previous pages of the survey or reload the pages.
Your progress might be lost if you do so.

4. Risks and Benefits

There are no risks associated with this online study. Discomforts or inconveniences will be minor and are not likely to happen. If any discomforts become a problem, you may discontinue your participation.

5. Data Protection and Confidentiality

Personal data (age, gender, etc.) will be recorded while participation. The researcher will not identify you by your real name in any reports using information obtained from this online study and that your confidentiality as a participant in this online study will remain secure and encrypted. All data you provide in this online study will be published anonymized and treated confidentially in compliance with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) of the European Union (EU). Subsequent uses of records and data will be subject to standard data use policies which protect the full anonymity of the participating individuals. In all cases, uses of records and data will be subject to the GDPR. Faculty and administrators from the campus will not have access to raw data or transcripts. This precaution will prevent your individual comments from having any negative repercussions. This site uses cookies and other tracking technologies to conduct the research, to improve the user experience, the ability to interact with the system and to provide additional content from third parties. Despite careful control of content, the researchers assume no liability for damages, which directly or indirectly result from the use of this online application. Any recordings cannot be viewed by anyone outside this research project unless we have you sign a separate permission form allowing us to use them (see below). Records that have not been made public are automatically deleted after the end of the research. The records will be destroyed if you contact the researcher to destroy or delete them immediately. As with any publication or online related activity, the risk of a breach of confidentiality is always possible. According to the GDPR, the researchers will inform the participant if a breach of confidential data was detected.

6. Identification of Investigators

If you have any questions or concerns about the research, please feel free to contact:

Johannes Wittmann and Dena Mehr

johannes1.wittmann@stud.uni-regensburg.de
dena.mehr@stud.uni-regensburg.de