Healing, Empowering, & Resilience Through Text Study 

By “unwanted sexual experience,” we mean any attempted or completed sexual contact involving private body parts that was unwanted and happened without your permission or consent. 

“Private body parts” are defined as a person’s genitals, breast, chest, and/or butt. 

“Bodily contact” is defined as a person intentionally using their hands, mouth, genitals, or an object to make contact with another person’s genitals, butt, or breasts OR making someone touch their own genitals, butt, or breasts with their hands, mouth, genitals, or an object. 

"Consent" is defined as an affirmative and verbal expression of wanting to engage in sexual activity that’s freely and clearly communicated. 

We are studying how people get better after being hurt. We look at the words people use when they text their friends, family, and coworkers.

We think these messages show a person's strength and how they cope. By sharing your texts, you help us find patterns that tell us how people heal. This helps us do a better job of supporting survivors who need help. 

1. Consent: A member of the research team will meet you, review all parts of the study, answer any questions, and then obtain your consent for participating in the study. 

2. Interviews: We will next conduct an interview over Zoom or Teams, focusing on how you are doing and your mental health during the past month. Some of the questions will ask about personal topics, including recent unwanted sexual experiences. We will ask about these topics because they help us learn how people recover from these experiences.

3. Telling your Story: We will ask you to tell us about different experiences. These will be happy moments, some sad moments, and the unwanted sexual contact you experienced. Comparison group members will be asked about the most difficult experience they have had in the last three years. Each story will only be about 5 minutes. 

4. Surveys: We will ask you to fill out a range of surveys. These questions will ask about how you are doing, past experiences, your resilience, and your support network.  

5. Mobile Phone Information: We will ask you to share some information from your mobile phone. This information will include your “screen time” data. We will ask you to share this information via screenshots (pictures of your phone) that you will take and share with us. We will be sure not to collect any identifying information (names, phone numbers) as part of these pictures. 

6. Text Information: We will also ask you to share some of your texts. We want to see if the language you have used can tell us how you are doing. 

Your texts are private, and we want to keep them that way. We have a safe way for you to share them with us. We remove all names and places before we save anything. Most importantly, we do not actually read your messages. We use a computer to count the words you use. This helps us see how you are strong and how you heal, without reading your private conversations.

You are in charge. When you share your texts, you can tell us which texts you do not want to share. 

We are only interested in your texts. We only look at the texts you wrote, not what others wrote to you. We also only look at texts from around the time you were hurt and from the past month.

None of this information - from the interviews to the text messages - will be shared outside of the research team. 

Yes, we ask you to turn your camera on at the start of the call. We need to verify your identity to make sure it is really you. This keeps the study safe.

After we say hello and complete the consent process, you can turn your camera off if that makes you feel more comfortable.

Please join the call from a quiet place where you can talk freely. 

We want you to feel safe and comfortable. Before we start, we will explain everything we are going to do. This process is called informed consent.

We do this so there are no surprises. It is your chance to ask questions and decide if this study is a good fit for you. We will talk about this when we meet, but you can read the form now if you like:

USC group consent form

Comparison group consent form

We take the protection of your information very seriously. 

Your data will be collected and stored safely at the University of Vermont. Your digital data will be saved on UVM's secure research servers. These servers are accessible only to UVM researchers on our team. These digital data include items we will obtain from your phone, surveys, and audio recordings.  

When you send us data, we will use UVM's secure file transfer service: https://filetransfer.uvm.edu/

Your data will be stored securely with an ID number, and your name and contact information will be stored separately. This means it is very hard to connect your data to anything that might identify you. 

We will keep your study data as confidential as possible, with the exception of certain information that we must report, such as child abuse, elder abuse, or intent to harm yourself or others.

For a more in depth explanation, please watch the video that can be found under the FAQ - Data Collection section. 

Study participation will take roughly 2 hours via Zoom or Teams.

For your time in the study, you will receive a $75 e-Visa gift card. 

If you choose to withdraw from the study, you will be compensated for your participation at a prorated amount. 

You can stop participating in this study at any time. If you leave the study, any information collected before you stopped will still be kept. However, you can ask us to delete your information if you or the researcher decides to end your participation.

If you are unable to share text message data, then we will have to withdraw you from the study. Text message data is the focus and most important part of our study. 

The University of Vermont does not provide websites for research studies. 

The person in charge of the study is Dr. Matthew Price, who is a professor at the University of Vermont in the Department of Psychological Science. 

If you have questions, you can email us at hearttstudy@uvm.edu 

You can call us at 802-656-9196 or email us at hearttstudy@uvm.edu