About the survey

Members of the Advisory Committee are from home care organizations, unions and a health and safety association in Ontario which have expertise in the occupational health and safety of PSWs in Ontario.  Advisory Committee members provide guidance on the design, content and analysis of the survey.  They do not see individual survey responses.  Later in the research project they will provide guidance on interview tools and knowledge dissemination.  Members of the Advisory Committee are:

Patricia Boucher, Advanced Gerontological Education (AGE), St. Peter’s Hospital

Catherine Brookman, Geriatric Medical Services

Sharon Davies, McMaster University

Margaret Denton, McMaster University

Brigid Buckingham, SEIU Healthcare

Henrietta Van hulle, Public Services Health and Safety Association

Janitha Joseph, Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), Local Union 3358-01

Margaret McAlister, Home Care Ontario

Wendy Robertson, St. Clair West Services for Seniors

Deborah Simon, Ontario Community Support Association

Ronda Dickie, PSW Representative, PSNO

Stefanie Nucci, PSW Representative, OPSWA

Susan VanderBent, Home Care Ontario

Isik Zeytinoglu, McMaster University

On-line Survey

You will be given the option of completing the survey on-line through a link on the website www.pswshaveasay.ca.  The survey will take about thirty minutes to complete.

Questions will be completed on-line.  At the end of each page there will be an “Exit and Clear Survey” icon if you chose not to complete the survey.  Clicking the “Exit and Clear Survey” icon will delete all of your responses.  You may complete the survey all at once or save the survey and come back to it at a later date.  In order to save your survey responses to complete at a later date, simply click the “Resume Later” icon located on the bottom of every page on the survey.  After you click on this button, you will be given appropriate instructions on how to save your unfinished survey.  At the end of the survey, there will be an icon to click to submit your survey.

After you complete the on-line survey, you will be sent to a “Thank You” page located on our website. Here, you will be asked if you would like to enter your name in order to participate in a telephone interview at a later date to discuss your occupational health and work life.  The interviews are the second phase of the research project, once the survey phase of the research project is complete.  Interview participants will be randomly selected and contacted at a later date.  The interview will take approximately 30 minutes and interview participants will receive $25 as a token of our appreciation.

Providing your contact information to participate in the interview is OPTIONAL. Your inputted contact information will be sent directly to the research staff at McMaster University and will not be linked with any of your survey answers.  Your contact information will be read in STRICT CONFIDENCE and only be seen by Dr. Zeytinoglu, Dr. Denton and their research staff at McMaster University. Your name and contact information will remain completely confidential and will not be linked with any of your survey answers.

Print-Mail Survey

Persons who wish to complete a print-mail survey may do so by pressing the “ORDER THE PRINT-MAIL SURVEY” icon directly from the micro website www.pswshaveasay.ca.  This icon will link to a space to provide us with your name and address to mail you a copy of the survey.  Your name and contact information will be provided directly to us and will remain completely confidential and will not be linked with any of your survey answers.  You will be mailed a copy of the survey, along with a postage paid return envelope.  The survey will take about thirty minutes to complete.  The survey will be mailed back to: Sharon Davies, Research Coordinator, The PSW Health and Safety Matters Survey, McMaster University, DeGroote School of Business, Room 403, Hamilton, Ontario, L8S 4M4.  We will not know whether or not you returned the survey.

At the end of the print-mail survey, you are asked if you would like to participate in a telephone interview at a later date to discuss your occupational health and work life.  The interviews are the second phase of the research project, once the survey phase of the research project is complete.  Interview participants will be randomly selected and contacted at a later date.  The interview will take approximately 30 minutes and interview participants will receive $25 as a token of our appreciation.  If you are interested in participating in an interview, simply fill out the contact information in the space provided and mail it back to us, along with your survey, in the postage paid envelope provided.  Providing your contact information to participate in the interview is OPTIONAL.  Your contact information will be read in STRICT CONFIDENCE and only be seen by Dr. Zeytinoglu, Dr. Denton and their research staff at McMaster University. Your contact information will not be linked with any of your survey answers.

Potential benefits to you are improvements in your occupational health and safety.  The results and recommendations from this survey will be provided to the Ontario Ministry of Labour and the organizations partnered in our research project to create healthier work environments for you and other PSWs. There will be also benefits to the scientific community to continue research and provide evidence on PSWs occupational health and safety.

You are participating in this survey CONFIDENTIALLY. We will not use your name or any information that would allow you to be identified. No one will know whether you participated unless you choose to tell them. Our research staff will know the names of those requesting a print-mail survey but will not know whether you sent in the mailed survey or not. If you complete the survey on-line within the specified time line and decide to participate in the gift card draw, you will provide your name and contact information directly to the research staff at McMaster.  We will only know that you responded to our online survey but will not know what your responses were.  Your name and contact information will remain completely confidential and will not be linked with any of your survey answers. The information/data you provide will be kept in a locked desk/cabinet where only Drs. Zeytinoglu and Denton, and their research staff will have access to it. Any information kept on a computer will be protected by a password. Once the research project has been completed, an archive of the data, without identifying information, will be maintained for 10 years.

If you complete the FOLLOW-UP TELEPHONE INTERVIEW page, you will provide your name and contact information.  This information will be mailed in the envelope with your survey but will not be linked with any of your survey answers.  Your name and contact information will remain completely confidential and only be seen by Dr. Zeytinoglu, Dr. Denton and their research staff at McMaster University.

Legally Required Disclosure

We will protect your privacy as outlined above. If legal authorities request the information you have provided, we will defend its confidentiality.

Your participation in this survey is VOLUNTARY.  If you decide to withdraw there will be no consequences to you.  Your decision of whether or not to take part in the survey will not affect your continuing employment or union membership in the sector.

Withdrawal from the On-line survey

If you decide not to be part of the study, you can stop (withdraw), from the survey for whatever reason, even after you agreed to participate in the online survey. You can withdraw anytime from completing the survey by hitting the EXIT AND CLEAR SURVEY button at the bottom of the page in the on-line survey.  If you do not want to answer some of the questions you do not have to, but you can still participate in the survey. You can simply skip the questions you do not wish to answer.  Once you have submitted your responses for this anonymous survey, your data will be put into a database and will not be identifiable to anyone. This means that once you have submitted your survey, your responses cannot be withdrawn from the study because we will not be able to identify which data is yours

Withdrawal from the Print-mail survey

For the print-mail survey, once you have received it, if you do not agree to participate in this study, you can either discard the survey or not mail it back to us.  If you do not want to answer some of the questions you do not have to, but you can still participate in the survey. You can simply skip the questions you do not wish to answer. Our research staff will know the names of those requesting the print-mail survey but will not know whether you mailed the survey or not.  If you have already mailed in your completed survey and decide to withdraw from participating, your responses cannot be withdrawn because we will not be able to identify which survey/data is yours.

The information gathered in this survey will be written up as a summary on the research project website. Only the aggregate data in the form of summary responses will be used.  No individual responses will be used.  We will also conduct webinars through our website that will be open to all PSWs and anyone else interested in the topic. he website will be linked from a variety of websites of organizations partnered in this research project.  Partner organizations include Home Care Ontario, the Ontario Community Support Association, the Public Services Health Safety Association, the Ontario Personal Support Worker Association, Personal Support Network of Ontario, the Service Employees International Union Local 1 (SEIU Healthcare Canada) and the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) Local Union 3358-01. We will also provide a report to the Ontario Ministry of Labour and will present results at practitioner conferences and in open-access, and traditional academic and practitioner journals.