Healing, Empowering, & Resilience Through Text

By "unwanted sexual experience," we mean any attempted or completed sexual contact involving private body parts that was unwanted and happened without your permission or consent.

Private body parts

A person's genitals, breast, chest, and/or butt.

Bodily contact

A person intentionally using their hands, mouth, genitals, or an object to make contact with another person's genitals, butt, or breasts, OR making someone touch their own genitals, butt, or breasts with their hands, mouth, genitals, or an object.

Consent

An affirmative and verbal expression of wanting to engage in sexual activity that's freely and clearly communicated.

We are studying how people get better after being hurt. We look at the words people use when they text their friends, family, and coworkers.

We think these messages show a person's strength and how they cope. By sharing your texts, you help us find patterns that tell us how people heal. This helps us do a better job of supporting survivors who need help.

Yes, we ask you to turn your camera on at the start of the call to verify your identity. This keeps the study safe.

After we say hello and complete the consent process, you can turn your camera off if that makes you feel more comfortable. Please join the call from a quiet place where you can talk freely.

We want you to feel safe and comfortable. Before we start, we will explain everything we are going to do. This process is called informed consent. It's your chance to ask questions and decide if this study is a good fit for you — so there are no surprises.

We will talk about this when we meet, but you can read the form now if you like:

descriptionConsent form — had an experience in the past 3 years descriptionConsent form — have not had a recent experience

Your data will be collected and stored safely at the University of Vermont on secure research servers accessible only to UVM researchers on our team. This includes items obtained from your phone, surveys, and audio recordings.

Your data is stored with an ID number, and your name and contact information are stored separately, making it very hard to connect your data to anything that might identify you. See Your privacy above for more, including a short video.

Study participation takes roughly 2 hours via Microsoft Teams.

For your time in the study, you will receive a $75 e-Visa gift card. If you choose to withdraw from the study, you will be compensated for your participation at a prorated amount.

You can stop participating at any time. Information collected before you stopped will still be kept, but you can ask us to delete your information if you or the researcher decides to end your participation.

Text message data is the focus and most important part of our study. If you are unable to share text message data, we will have to withdraw you from the study.

The University of Vermont does not provide websites for research studies. The study is led by Dr. Matthew Price, a professor in the Department of Psychological Science at the University of Vermont.

Call us at 802-656-9196 or email hearttstudy@uvm.edu. You can also find all contact options in the Contact section below.