To help with this study, we hope that you have time to complete a brief survey. If you work for an agency (sorry, no private practice) and you either provide direct services to infants toddlers and their families, or are directly supervising practitioners and programs serving infants, toddlers, and families in the home and community, then, you are invited to participate in this survey.
Information Sheet for Workplace Supports in Infant Mental Health Survey
Principal Investigator: JoAnn L. Robinson, Ph.D.
Student: Tanika Eaves Simpson
Title of Study: Workplace Supports in the Infant Mental Health Field: An Examination of Burnout, Compassion Fatigue, and Protective Practices
You are invited to participate in this survey of practitioners who are either providing direct services to, or supervising practitioners and programs serving infants, toddlers, and families in the home and community. I am a graduate student at the University of Connecticut, and I am conducting this survey as part of my dissertation. I am interested in finding out how practitioners working with infants, toddlers, and families in the home and community feel about their work, and what workplace supports infant/family practitioners identify as being helpful in preventing burnout and increasing work satisfaction.
Your participation in this study involves completion of a survey. This should take approximately 15-20 minutes of your time. Your participation will be anonymous and you will not be contacted again in the future. You will not be paid for being in this study. As a thank you for participating, you’ll have an opportunity to enter a drawing for a chance to win a $50 Amazon gift card. Up to 10 Amazon gift cards, one for every 50 surveys completed, will be distributed. You will be invited to provide contact information through a second survey link at the end, in order to keep your personal information separate from your responses to the survey. We will randomly select a participant ‘winner’ after 50, 100, 150, etc. surveys are complete. This second dataset will be destroyed when all gift cards are sent. This survey does not involve any risk to you. However, the benefits of your participation may impact society by helping increase knowledge about effective ways of supporting the infant mental health workforce with managing work-related stress (i.e. burnout and compassion fatigue), and determining key factors of work satisfaction.
There are eligibility criteria for the study. We are seeking to learn about the work environments of employed individuals at all levels of the infant mental health workforce. If you are an infant/toddler child care provider, home visitor, nurse/or other healthcare professional, social worker, mental health provider, case manager, early intervention/developmental disabilities service provider, supervisor, or program manager in an infant/toddler/family serving program you are eligible to participate as long as your employment meets the following description:
- You are employed at least part-time for an agency, program, or organization providing direct services to infants, toddlers, and families in the home, and/or community (i.e. you receive hourly or salaried compensation with income taxes withheld from gross weekly or monthly wages/salary).
- If you work for an early childhood consultation program serving child care centers and you provide direct service to families some of the time, you are eligible to respond to this survey.
- If you are retired, you must be working at least part-time for an infant-family serving agency, organization, or program to be eligible to
- If you are on leave from your job for a period of more than 30 days, you are not eligible to participate in this survey. If you have been away from your job for 2 or more weeks in the past 30 days, please wait to take this survey once you have returned to your place of work and have been there for at least 30
If you are an independent contractor/consultant, in private practice, a student intern or volunteer, you do not meet eligibility criteria to participate in this study. Please do not go further. Thank you for your time in considering participation.
You do not have to be in this study if you do not want to be. You do not have to answer any question that you do not want to answer for any reason. We will be happy to answer any questions you have about this study. If you have further questions about this project or if you have a research-related problem, you may contact me, Tanika Eaves Simpson (the student) at [email protected], or 203-889-8397; or my advisor, Dr. JoAnn Robinson at (860)-486-8781. If you have any questions about your rights as a research participant you may contact the University of Connecticut Institutional Review Board (IRB) at 860-486-8802. The IRB is a group of people who review research studies to protect the rights and welfare of research participants. Please click below
https://uconn.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_cNi6EXBOCO4niaV
to access the survey. Thank you.
