This study aims to examine how identities and sexuality are formed in digital spaces. Survey data and follow-up interviews will help develop a course centered around providing a safe and creative space for students to learn within. This analysis will ideally provide specific areas in which readings and coursework can be most rhetorically effective for digital personas. Hopefully, this research will also spark broader interest in generating further courses with digital identities as a topic. The responses from this survey will be quoted in a thesis written by the Primary Investigator.

You will need to complete a survey comprised of short- and long-answer questions. Your responses to the survey will help create an online course centered around digital avatars. Since this will be adding to an existing body of research, work from this thesis may be quoted in future studies. The survey will conclude by asking whether you are willing to participate in a follow-up interview in a method of your choosing, whether it is Zoom, Discord, in-game, or in any other manner where I may ask you to elaborate on survey answers.

Recalling challenging experiences in life can be uncomfortable. The survey has no required questions (other than collecting your consent) and please feel free to not answer any questions that make you uncomfortable. You may exit out of the survey at any time.

The survey is anonymous as long as you do not consent to be contacted for follow-up interview. In which case, you will provide another way to contact you for a semi-structured interview. You will not need to provide your name in this study. Your full survey will not be shared with anyone besides the researcher.

Should you participate in the follow-up survey, the chances of your responses being personally identifiable increase. Any quotes from your survey or interview that end up in published research will be presented pseudonymously, and potentially identifiable details will be altered or left out to make identification more difficult. You may also review a copy of the thesis prior to publication to ensure that you are comfortable with how your words are represented.

Your responses will contribute directly to the development of an online class dealing with digital identity formation. Reflecting on your own experiences may not be entirely useful for you, but for those still trying to discover and experience certain things about themselves, your contributions could be invaluable.

Participation is voluntary and there will be no penalty for refusal to participate. You may withdraw consent at any time prior to the publication of the thesis. You may choose not to answer any questions in the survey or in the follow-up interview (other than agreeing to participate in the study).

All data collected will be kept confidential. Responses are anonymous unless you choose to share your email address or some other way to contact you. Most survey data will be presented as coded statistics, but there will be a particular focus on certain responses. If survey responses are represented individually or in quoted form, or if you choose to participate in a follow-up interview, you will be assigned a pseudonym for the purpose of discussing responses in the thesis.

You may ask any questions about the nature of the research and how this information will be used. Principal Investigator James Ottoson will be available to answer questions by email (James.Ottoson@smail.astate.edu).

For questions over participants' rights, please contact the Office of Research and Technology Transfer, ABI Room 116, P.O. Box 2760, State University, AR 72467, 870-972-2447