ProjectRISE

Inclusive Innovation Study

Would you like to contribute to evidence-based strategies for creating positive cultural change in science and engineering?

 

Do you work as a faculty member or STEM professional in any of the following fields?

 

Science   |   Technology   |   Engineering   |   Math

 

You are invited to take part in an innovative, federally funded gender equality research project on creating collaborative cultures in the workplace. Your organization and others have joined an exciting new collaborative effort with leading research scientists to conduct and assess the efficacy of a virtual workshop designed to improve workplace experiences and promote professional success by cultivating an inclusive culture. These workshop will be a 3.5 hour virtual workshop hosted over Zoom. The workshop and follow-up surveys cover topics related to organizational values, gender and ethnic diversity in teams, effective communication, and promoting an inclusive culture through allyship.

 

Quick Links

RISE Workshops

Inclusive Innovation Study

Volunteers will be randomly assigned (like the flip of a coin) to complete the workshop during either an early set of dates or a later set of dates (i.e., a waitlist control experimental design). To assess both the short and long-term impact of each workshop, attendees will be invited to complete five online surveys before and after the seminar.

Eligible Participants Must:

• Work full-time as a faculty member or STEM professional in a discipline related to science, technology, engineering, or math.

How to Participate:

• Click here or follow the link above to learn more about the study and how to volunteer to participate.

• This project has been reviewed and received clearance from the research ethics boards at the University of British Columbia and the University of Waterloo. You will be asked to indicate your consent to participate after you complete some basic eligibility questions.

Expected Time Commitment to Participate:

• 5.5 hours over the span of 8 months.

• Your organization supports this research and has committed to having participating employees complete the workshop and surveys during work time.

• In gratitude for your participation, the researchers will offer you the opportunity to enter a draw for a $100 gift card to Amazon.ca.

FAQ

Please click on the frequently asked questions below to learn more about participating in the RISE Workshops.

 

Who is the research team?

  • Dr. Toni Schmader holds the Canada Research Chair in Psychology at the University of British Columbia and is the director of the Consortium on Engendering Success in STEM.
  • Dr. Hilary Bergsieker is an Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Waterloo.
  • Dr. Schmader can be contacted at rise@psych.ubc.ca or 604-822-6205. Dr. Bergsieker can be contacted at essrise@uwaterloo.ca.
  • Dr. Schmader and Dr. Bergsieker jointly lead the Project RISE team, which is comprised of other faculty researchers, postdoctoral and doctoral trainees, and technical staff.


Who is eligible to participate?

  • To be eligible to participate, you must work full-time as a faculty member or STEM professional in a discipline related to science, technology, engineering, or math. If you wish to clarify your eligibility, feel free to email us at: rise@psych.ubc.ca.

What is the time commitment?

  • The time commitment for participants is estimated to be approximately 5-5.5 hours over the span of 8 months.

How long is recruitment open?

  • Each organization has an internal deadline for recruitment purposes; your organization’s liaison for this study has that information for you. If you are unsure of who to contact in your organization, you can email us at rise@psych.ubc.ca.

Is there a difference between the early and late workshops? How are employees assigned?

  • Each workshop will include the same content but will occur at a different date.
  • You will be randomly assigned (like the flip of a coin) to take part in the Inclusive Innovation workshop during an early or later set of dates. The workshop will be a 3.5 hour virtual but interactive session and will be hosted over Zoom.

 

Why is assignment to the workshop randomly determined?

  • Assignment to the early or late workshop is determined at random (like the flip of a coin; with constraints for eligibility) to adhere to the protocol for a “waitlist control design.” This method allows the research team to test whether participants in the workshop have different experiences and outcomes than those who have not yet experienced the workshop (i.e., those assigned to the later workshop), while still allowing all employees the opportunity to participate in the workshop. To conduct a true experiment, we randomly assign people to the early or late workshops to minimize any systematic reason that participants in one workshop would be different from those in the other workshop. Random assignment is the hallmark of rigorous science when testing interventions.

Can I be assigned to a workshop with another person at my organization?

  • Volunteers will be randomly assigned (like the flip of a coin) to either the early or late workshop dates, so any two individuals have a 50% chance of being in the same workshop.

What if I am only available to participate on one of the two days that the workshops are being held?

Who is facilitating the workshops?

  • The workshop will be facilitated by members of our team, consisting of one Project RISE Social Science team member (either Dr. Toni Schmader, University of British Columbia; or Dr. Hilary Bergsieker, University of Waterloo), and one to two highly qualified personnel.

What is expected of employees during and after the workshop?

  • Participants are expected to give their undivided attention during the presentation portions of the workshop, to talk with other participants during the session, engage with Q&A/brainstorming conversations, respond to survey questions/questionnaires, and agree/adhere to workshop expectations which will be outlined at the beginning of the workshop.
  • Participants are also encouraged to complete all surveys provided prior to and after the workshop take place so that the research team can test the short and long term efficacy of the workshop on participants’ attitudes and actions.

Where can I find more information about the workshops in advance of participating?

  • Please refer to this site: projectrise.ca/UBC.

Is there a fee for me to participate?

  • No.

How many participants are in each workshop?

  • There will be 15-30 participants in each workshop.

How do I register for the workshop?

How is confidentiality maintained in the workshops and follow-up surveys?

  • Expectations of confidentiality will be established at the beginning of each workshop session.
  • No content of any discussions occurring during the workshops will be shared with your employer or with anyone else at your organization.
  • Only qualified members of the research team will have access to your survey responses or any other data that may be linked to your identity. No information that could potentially be used to identify you will ever be shared outside of the research team. For more information on the types of information that may be shared from this study, please see “Who will have access to the data that is collected?” below.
  • Once you have signed up via the Project RISE Screening Survey and your eligibility has been confirmed, you will be contacted at the email address you specify with each survey link (the survey links will not go through your employer). The only information relating to your identity that your employer might receive is a list of employees who participate, but only for those organizations who provide an estimate of employee time spent on the research as an in kind contribution to the partnership project.
  • Once all data for the project have been collected and saved to the Project RISE repository at UBC, the research team will permanently delete all responses to the survey from the server. To ensure that all information potentially necessary for analyses has been obtained, we will apply a 90-day period from the close of data collection for data verification and cross-checks before deleting the data from the server.
  • If your email address changes or you leave your organization during the study, you will have options to update your contact information.

Is Zoom secure?

  • Zoom does not make use of end-to-end encryption and may be susceptible to third-party interceptions. To ensure your security and mitigate this risk, all meetings will be hosted using Personal Meetings IDs (PMI) and require a password to enter the meeting. This allows us to ensure that only invited participants will ever have access to join the session.
  • Screen sharing is restricted to the hosts, and the meeting will be locked 15 minutes after the session start time. Thus, it is important that you arrive on time to each session. You will be free to exit the session at any time if you so choose. We ask that you refrain from sharing meeting links, PMI, or passwords on social media or any public outlets.
  • Zoom servers are located in Canada, and Zoom stores users’ names and usage data in of Canada.
  • We may record some portions of the session for analysis purposes only; all participants will receive an automatic notification when recording is enabled and only the research team will ever have access to these recordings. Your private conversations with other participants during the session will never be recorded. All recordings are stored on the host’s password-protected and encrypted computer after which they will be transferred to a secure NAS server. Out of courtesy for other participants’ privacy, we ask that you do not screenshot or record any portions of the study session.
  • In line with Zoom best practices, you may log in using a nickname and may turn off your camera and mute your microphone when it is not needed (i.e., during non-discussion-based components).
  • If you prefer not to use Zoom for any reason, please inform the research team by emailing rise@psych.ubc.ca.

Who will have access to the data that is collected?

  • Your employer will receive only aggregate statistics (e.g., means, frequencies) for their employees who participate in the study. No individual-level data will ever be shared with your employer.
  • Anonymized quantitative data from this research study may be made available to qualified academic experts only (e.g., journal editors) for purposes of publishing. For the purposes of reproducible statistical analyses, we will publish the covariance matrices and the means for each workshop condition (averaged across all organizations) in an open science data repository (osf.io). Please note that it is not possible to identify either participants or organizations from this aggregate-level information.

If something comes up and I cannot attend, what should I do?

  • Please notify the research team (at rise@psych.ubc.ca) and your organisation’s liaison immediately so that they can update the workshop assignments and notify any waitlist participants.

Do I need to do anything to prepare ahead of time?

  • You will be asked to complete one or two brief (15-20 minute) surveys before the workshop, depending on your assigned date. More information about these surveys, and a link to participate, will be sent to you by the RISE team.
  • In order to protect the security of yourself and others, we also ask that you carefully review the Zoom guidelines and participant expectations above prior to attending the workshop.

Will I have a break during the workshop?

  • Yes, there will be two 10-minute breaks.

Will the short- or long-term findings of the workshop be shared with me after I participate?

  • If you would like to sign up to receive a report on the general Project RISE findings once the project is complete, you can do so on this page (see “Quick Links” > “Receive Study Updates”).

Can I participate in the workshop without completing any surveys?

  • We hope that participants in the workshop will want to participate in the baseline survey and follow-up surveys; however, each part of the study is voluntary. For us to evaluate the effectiveness of the workshop, we need to collect data from attendees.

What happens if I miss the window to complete a survey?

  • If you miss the deadline, please complete the survey as soon as possible. If you try to do so and see a message that it is closed, please complete the next survey when it is shared with you.

What do I do if my contact email for the study has changed before the study is completed?

  • You will have the opportunity to update your contact information at the end of each survey. If your contact information changes between surveys, please update your contact information using the Project RISE portal (ProjectRISE.ca/UBC) or contact rise@psych.ubc.ca.

Whom can I contact if I have concerns about my rights as a research participant?

  • This project has been reviewed and received clearance from research ethics boards at both the University of British Columbia and the University of Waterloo. If you have any concerns or complaints about your rights as a research participant and/or your experiences while participating in this study, contact the Research Participant Complaint Line in the University of British Columbia Office of Research Ethics by e-mail at RSIL@ors.ubc.ca or by phone at 604-822-8598 (toll free: 1-877-822-8598) or the University of Waterloo Office of Research Ethics at 519-888-4567 ext. 36005 or ore-ceo@uwaterloo.ca. If you have further questions about the goals of this study, please contact Dr. Schmader by email (rise@psych.ubc.ca) or phone (604-822-6205).

Can I recommend another organization that might be interested in participating in these workshops?

  • Absolutely! We would be happy to receive your recommendation.

 

Can I remain enrolled in the study if I leave my organization or change positions within the organization?

  • Yes, definitely! Please make sure your contact information is up to date so that we can follow up with you. We would like to track your experiences even if you have left your organization or if you have a new position within your organization.
  • If you leave your organization during the course of the study, your original employer will not be notified of your participation past the end of your employment period.

Who can I speak with regarding my accessibility needs? (For example: visual impairments, hearing impairments)

  • Please report any accessibility needs for the surveys and virtual seminars in the sign-up survey and/or notify your organization’s liaison. If you are unsure of who to contact in your organization, you can email us at rise@psych.ubc.ca.

Where can I find more information?

You can read more about Project RISE on this site: ProjectRISE.ca/UBC.

If you have additional questions about participating in this study, please contact rise@psych.ubc.ca.