How we protect your confidentiality

• The 3E Study takes several steps to make sure that the information you give us remains private and safe. We will never identify participants in any reports or publications we write. 
• Furthermore, our study has a Certificate of Confidentiality from the National Institutes of Health, which means that the researchers cannot release information that may identify you for any legal proceedings unless you say it is okay.

How we protect your data

• When you consent to participate in the study, we create an ID number for you that is used in place of your name or other identifying information. 
• When online study data is downloaded onto the 3E data manager’s password-protected, secure computer, your name and other identifying information are deleted and only the ID is kept in the dataset. 
• In order to link your data across the various study activities, we keep a secure list of IDs connected to names, email addresses, and phone numbers. Only a select group of trained research staff have access to this list, and this list will be deleted at the end of the study.
• While the research team will keep your information confidential, there are some risks of data breaches when sending information over the internet that are beyond the control of the research team.

Participant protections

Thank you for sharing your experiences with us as a participant in the 3E study. Remember that participating in this study is completely voluntary, and you can withdraw from the study at any time. No additional data will be collected after you withdraw, but we would like to include data collected up to the point of withdrawal in our analysis. Please notify the study team if you would like your data not to be included in analysis, by emailing [email protected].