You have been invited to download the Kids Play Research App and take part in the research project entitled “The value of understanding authentic autistic play for successful inclusion of autistic pupils within a play-based curriculum in Scottish schools”
All autistic children in Scotland (with the consent of their parents) are eligible to participate in the survey within the app, and are encouraged to take part to gather a substantial number of views on authentic autistic play preferences.
For parents and carers:
Once you’ve downloaded the app you will be prompted to sign up to the app using Supabase authentication. Immediately prior to signing up you will get a copy of the participant information sheet on screen within the app and once you have signed the consent you will able to sign up using an email and password of your choosing. Everyone who logs in will be automatically assigned a secret ID, so from the very first login your information is completely anonymised and all the data that you provide is confidential. It is expected that parents/carers will be the ones who log in, and that children will be supervised while using the app. You do not need to do anything other than provide whatever support your child may need in order to participate, such as reading the statement out loud to them, or being aware of any signs of confusion, frustration or fatigue that they may show. Only you and your child will know how much or how little they will manage at a time, please do not feel pressured to complete it all at once or to complete it on their behalf. It is important that their genuine preferences are recorded for maximum benefit of the research.
When the app is opened and logged in, you will see the button for the video survey as an icon, which you can click on to begin. There is a short introduction as a symbolised statement for your child, explaining that the clip will play on a loop until they answer and move on to the next one. The survey contains 82 short clips of children at play. Each clip is a few seconds long and each screen has three pictorial buttons to choose from and should be responded to by your child, not by you, based on the whether they agree or disagree that they would like to play this way. This should take around ten to fifteen minutes in total, but your child can take as long as they wish. It does not have to be in one go, and if you leave and come back you can start back where you left off. If you get disconnected from the internet at any point, simply log back in when you have a connection again. Once all the videos have been viewed and all the responses have been given you are all done, and you can decide whether or not you wish to remove the app from your phone at that point or whether you wish to keep it.
If you wish to make a subject access request or any other GDPR procedure during the process you'll need to provide your secret ID in order for your data to be accessed. You can access this by clicking the 'secret ID' button on the main screen of the app. To simply delete your data and leave the research, you can click the 'delete data' button on the main screen of the app. Participants are reminded that if you request that your data be deleted, your video survey responses will still be included within the research - this will not be deleted as it is non-identifiable information not covered by data protection or GDPR procedures. More information can be found on the privacy pages of the website.
Following the completion of all parts of the research, you will be invited to join a mailing list where you can be appraised with the outcome of the research once it is finished, and you can also follow the progress of the research on Instagram at @autistic_phd.