Thank you for your participation in this study. Please read the information below.
Project title: Development and validation of the Humiliation Approach-Withdrawal Scale (HAWS): An event-specific measure of behavioural responses to humiliation in group settings
This interview was part of a study in the Honours program in the Department of Psychology and Health Studies at the University of Saskatchewan. The primary purpose of the research is to train the student researcher in the methods of behavioural research. The secondary purpose of this research is to investigate, develop and validate a measure for behavioural responses to humiliation. During your interview, you were asked questions about your experience with a humiliating event.
Defining Humiliation: Humiliation is a social experience in which a perpetrator (the humiliator) devalues a person’s social status within a group, against that person’s will, through mistreatment, or by embarrassing them on purpose in front of their peers. The present study limits its focus to intra-group humiliation: humiliation by a member of a group or organization a person belongs to, such as a workplace, school, team, or club, witnessed by at least one other person. Humiliation by someone outside the group is not studied here. Humiliation is unique because it involves simultaneous judgments (appraisals) made about the situation by the humiliated. The first appraisal is internalization of the devaluation, in which the person is made to feel inferior by others and now views themselves as lesser because of the event. The second appraisal is that the degradation is appraised as unjustified, because the treatment was overly degrading. These judgments lead to actions known as withdrawal and approach. Withdrawal removes one’s interaction with the source of the humiliation and those who witnessed it. Approach is actions directed at the source of the humiliation with the intention to correct one’s loss of status or reputation. Either response can be visible (overt) to others or carried out quietly (covert), and it is the covert responses that researchers have overlooked and that the current study intends to investigate and include within the scale.
How your answers will contribute to the study: Your answers will be compared with the other interviews, and the most common themes or types of responses reported will be recorded. Key themes that belong to approach or withdrawal categories in overt and covert fashion will be identified and reported. Your answers will assist in creating the initial questions for the Humiliation Approach-Withdrawal Scale (HAWS).
Data: Following this interview, the student researcher will immediately begin transcribing the recording into a transcript. After the transcription is completed the recording will be deleted. You will receive your transcript by email with a transcript release form and will have two weeks to add to or delete sections of your transcript. If the signed release form is not returned, your transcript will be deleted and nothing from your interview will be used. You may ask to have your interview withdrawn and deleted at any point before you submit the transcript release form. Following your approval of the transcript release form, your transcript will be stored securely by the supervisor for a minimum of 5 years, after which it will be destroyed beyond recovery. The email used to book your interview will be deleted alongside any conversations in the student researcher’s email with you.
Privacy: All identifiable information will be removed from your transcript, and the transcript will be assigned a random participant number, with your name, and email absent from the recording or lines within the transcript.
Thank you again for your participation in the study. If you have any questions or concerns