Survey – Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act and Communication

The project aims to explore how young people who are non-speaking, sometimes speaking or communicate differently can use the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act 2015. Your response to this survey will be used to understand knowledge of the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act 2015 and different forms of communication among professionals in the Republic of Ireland.

Who can take part?
Professionals from a broad range of backgrounds working in the Republic of Ireland can take part. This includes those working in the health, social care, financial, legal and community support sectors. You must be 18 years of age or over.

Do I have to take part?

Your participation is entirely voluntary and you are free to withdraw at any point until you submit your response. As no identifiable information is collected in the survey it will not be possible to identify individual responses and delete them after this point.

How long will the survey take to complete?

This survey should take around 10 – 15 minutes to complete.

What sort of questions will I have to answer?

The survey will ask you for some general demographic information, and some questions about the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act 2015 and different or alternative forms of communication. No identifiable information (e.g., your name, where you are from) will be collected as part of this survey.

Who will have access to my response?

The researcher, Dr. Clíona de Bhailís, will be the only one with access to your survey response. She will work with an advisory group and her mentor Prof. Eilionóir Flynn to analyse the responses to the survey. No identifiable information will be collected so they will not know who you are.

Are there any risks in taking part?

There are no immediate risks for you in taking part in this research. The survey will not collect any personal information about you. Therefore, there is no risk of your personal data being comprised or your response being identified by the researcher or your employer. You will not be asked to and should not include any identifying information about your clients. If the researcher is concerned that someone could be identified from the responses provided she will anonymise the information or if identification would still be possible with anonymisation she will exclude these findings from the study.

Are there any benefits to taking part?

There are no immediate benefits for you in taking part in this research. It will help us learn about how the Assisted Decision-Making (Capacity) Act is working in practice, the problems faced by people who are non-speaking, sometimes speaking or who communicate differently and how to fix them. Participants in this research will not receive any payment or vouchers for their participation.

Further Information & Contact Details

If you have questions about the research or the survey you can contact Clíona by email at cliona.debhailis@universityofgalway.ie or by calling 086-0081153 (call and text).

This research has received approval from the University of Galway’s Research Ethics Committee. You can email ethics@universityofgalway.ie to talk to the Research Ethics Coordinator or the Chair of the University of Galway Research Ethics Committee.

If you have concerns about how your data is stored or managed, you can contact the University of Galway Data Protection Officer at dataprotection@universityofgalway.ie or call (091) 524411. The best way to contact Data Protection Commission (Ireland) is through their online webform available at https://www.dataprotection.ie/en/contact/how-contact-us