Distress Brief Intervention: follow-up survey

Do I have to take part?

No. Taking part is voluntary. You are being invited to take part as you were referred to DBI Level 2 and gave your consent to being contacted three months after your final session. We are interested in whether your experience of DBI is still helpful to you now.

What’s involved?

You are invited to fill in a short online questionnaire regarding your experiences of DBI and how you’ve been getting on since then.

Is the research confidential?

Yes. We will treat information you give in the strictest confidence under the Data Protection Act 2018 and the European Union General Data Protection Regulation. The results collected are used for research purposes only and no one looking at the findings will be able to identify you in any way.

To protect your confidentiality, your care providers will not have access to this information and will not know whether or not you decide to take part. This means that it’s very important that you seek help if you are feeling distressed now, as you will not be contacted as a result of completing the questionnaire. You can contact your GP, NHS 24, Breathing Space or Samaritans for support and some contact details are given below.

What will happen to any information I give?

Your answers will be treated with care and with full respect for your privacy. Information will be held securely by the Scottish Government for up to 5 years for research purposes only and will be managed in accordance with data protection legislation. It will not be possible for anyone not in the immediate research team to connect any information containing personal identifiers like names with any other information you give in the questionnaire and consent forms will be stored separately from any other information you provide. You will only be contacted for research purposes.

Whether you take part or not, and any information that you give, will in no way affect any support you receive.

What are the risks or benefits of taking part?

There are no risks in taking part in the research. Your responses will not be known by your DBI practitioner and it will not affect any services you are involved with. You can stop taking part at any point.

Your answers will help us find out about what Distress Brief Intervention is doing well and how it can be improved. Taking part is completely voluntary, but we do hope you will get involved.

Where can I find out more?

If you have any further questions, please contact Alex Scholes of the DBI evaluation team at ScotCen on 0131 240 0210 or at alex.scholes@scotcen.org.uk.

If you wish to make a complaint about this study you can contact Professor Jayne Donaldson (Dean of Faculty of Health Sciences and Sport, University of Stirling) on 01786 46 6345

If you are experiencing distress and need support now, you can contact:

Your GP

NHS 24 - Phone: 111

Breathing Space - Phone: 0800 83 85 87

Samaritans - Phone: 166 123; Email: jo@samaritans.org

What do I do now?

If you would like to take part in the evaluation, just complete the online survey and it will come directly to the evaluation team.

For further information about how the DBI evaluation team processes personal data for research purposes and your data rights please visit our webpage: https://www.dbi.scot/evaluation-privacy-notice/