1. Arlinda Shehu, a graduate student in the Saint Louis University Psychology department, and Jules Valentine, an undergraduate student in the Saint Louis University Neuroscience department, are inviting you to participate in this research study. Thank you for your interest in our research, which is designed to explore the experiences of transgender individuals.
2. The title of this study is “Exploring Mood, Emotion, and Regulation in Gender-affirming Estrogen therapy.” The purpose of this study is to better understand how estrogen therapy impacts mood and emotional regulation in transgender individuals. We are particularly interested in how fluctuations in hormone levels affect daily mood outcomes.
3. Your participation in this study will involve completing an online questionnaire that should take no more than 30 minutes to complete and nightly surveys that will take approximately 3 minutes to complete. You will receive a notification to complete the surveys at 9pm for 30 days.
4. The risks to you as a participant are minimal. These include potential emotional discomfort when answering questions, mild boredom, and loss of confidentiality. Although we ask you to disclose information about your mental health, we do provide (and encourage the use of) a list of mental health resources.
5. Saint Louis University requires that private information about you be protected. The results of this study may be published in scientific research journals or presented at professional conferences. However, your name and identity will not be revealed, and your record will remain anonymous. No identifying information, such as your name, email address, or IP address, will be collected for this research. In other words, there will be no way to determine that you provided a particular answer. To further minimize the risk of loss of anonymity, your responses will be encrypted for transmission and stored on secure servers.
6. Your participation in this study will involve filling out questionnaires about your mood, thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. Participation in this study will not benefit you directly. It may indirectly benefit you by enhancing awareness of your daily mood in relation to hormones. Additionally, your participation may benefit others by increasing knowledge of hormone-mood interactions in transgender women.
7. You can choose not to participate. If you decide not to participate, there will not be a penalty to you or loss of any benefits to which you are otherwise entitled. You may withdraw from this study at any time.
8. If you have questions about this research study, you can reach Arlinda Shehu at arlinda.shehu@slu.edu or Jules Valentine at jules.garner@slu.edu. If you have questions about your rights as a research participant, you can call the Saint Louis University Institutional Review Board at 314-977-7744 and reference STUDY00000437.