Participant Recruitment Information
Participant recruitment email
Subject: Participation in research study – University of Scranton – pays $100 Amazon gift card
Good afternoon, my name is Dr. Joshua Reynolds, and I am a forensic psychologist at the University of Scranton. I am conducting research on behavioral analysis/offender profiling/investigative criminal analysis and I am contacting you regarding potential participation in a research study based on your expertise in this area. A description of your participation is below. We greatly appreciate your time and effort, and this study pays a $100 Amazon gift card.
If you are NOT interested in participating in this study, you do not need to do anything.
If you identify as an individual with knowledge or expertise in the area of offender profiling and would like to participate in this study, you can use the link below to complete the informed consent. After completing the informed consent, you will be asked your name and email address. This is only for the purposes of paying you the participant compensation and will not be connected to the data. Lastly, you will see a link where you can download the instructions on how to complete the study. After following the instructions and completing the study, you will receive and email within a few days which will contain the $100 Amazon gift card.
Please feel free to contact me with any questions and I hope you will consider participating in the study. -Dr. Joshua Reynolds
Participation description:
Your participation would consist of the following:
1) use the link below to complete the informed consent for the study.
2). Using another link that is in the instructions, access and read two homicide cases which contain the officer’s description of the initial investigation, photographs of the crime scene, autopsy records, etc.
3) You would read the cases and create your written profile of the offender for each case (in the word processing software of your choosing).
4) Once you have the two profiles written, you would then access another link where you would copy and paste your written profile and additionally answer several specific questions about the offender for each case. In this part we also will ask some background questions about yourself, such as law enforcement experience.
There is no absolute time limit imposed when reading the case or writing the profile. You may spend as little or as much time as you feel necessary to construct an accurate profile. However, you are expected to take no more than 1 week to complete these tasks and most will likely take 1 day to complete. Answering the specific questions about each case and answering the questions about yourself should take about 30 minutes. The material is of a violent and explicit nature. Only participate if you feel comfortable viewing images and other material concerning a homicide. When the data is compiled, all identifying information is disconnected, so your name will not appear anywhere in the data.
Please click here to sign the Informed consent link