What's involved?

1. Information and consent

  • First, you will receive information sheets for yourself and your parent or guardian that explain what participating in the study involves.
  • We want to make sure that you give informed consent. So, before you agree to participate, if you or your parent have questions after reading the information sheets, please feel free to contact our research team either by email, mail or phone (see contact us for more details)
  • Once you and your parent have decided to go ahead, both should sign the consent forms and send them back to us. We will also ask your parent to fill in a questionnaire. This will check for medical and other reasons for potential inclusion or exclusion from the study.
  • Once we've gone through your forms we will phone you to tell you whether you can take part and to give you information about the next step on the journey.

2. At home

  • We will ask you to install a software programme on a computer with internet connection at home and to run the programme.
  • The programme asks you to complete several questionnaires about your personality and thinking style and about how you feel about the study (e.g. fearful, excited, curious etc).
  • There are also some reaction time tasks - these can be a lot of fun but also quite challenging!
  • We will send you the information on how to do this by phone, mail or email, whatever is convenient for you.

3. Assessment session

  • Once we have received the data from your home testing, you and one of your parents will be invited to participate in another assessment session that will take place at the Research Centre.
  • At the research institute, we'd like your parent/guardian to share their impressions of you as well as to tell us about themselves. Therefore, we will ask them to answer questions using a computer as well as take part in an interview.
  • On the same day, we will ask you to take part in an interview, to do some more reaction tasks, to have a blood sample taken and to have a brain scan in a so-called magnetic resonance or MR scanner.
  • In the interview, we will ask you about common psychological symptoms such as depression and anxiety.
    We will also ask you about any drug and alcohol use and other risk-taking behaviours. Your parents will not be present during this interview so you can feel free to be as open and honest as you like.
  • You may also be asked to perform a number of tasks while lying in the MR scanner. These tasks measure your thinking style and reaction times. You will not have to do much - just press some buttons when a signal is presented. Before each task begins, you will be told in detail what the task will involve. While doing the tasks, the scanner takes pictures of your working brain.
  • In order to be able to do analyses on specific genetic characteristics we would like to take a blood sample on the day you are at the Research Centre, which will be used to extract your DNA.

4. Follow-up

  • About two years after these assessments we will call you to find out how you are doing and if you have changed any behaviours or attitudes since participating in the study.

Confidentiality

  • Quite rightly, people are concerned about confidentiality.
  • We will keep the information you give us confidential. We will not make your details known to third parties.
  • In particular, information revealed to us will remain confidential from the other members of your family. We keep your responses in confidence and they will not reported to your parent unless you would like us to do so.
  • Personal data and results from the studies will be stored in such a manner that no unauthorized person will be able to access them. When personal data and biological material are to be transferred to another research site, it will be transferred in anonymized coded form only.
  • All personal data (e.g. name and address) will be kept strictly separate from the questionnaires, the interview and the DNA and image data.
  • All information will be pseudonymized before being used for scientific analysis. "Pseudoymized" means that the questionnaires, the interview, and the results of the imaging will be kept under a special code number when sent for analysis. Personal data will not be disclosed to the scientists carrying out the scientific analyses.