PACE Study FAQs

Project PACE is a collaboration between researchers at Duke University (Dr. Rick Hoyle, Dr. Erin Davisson) and the University of California of Irvine (Dr. Candice Odgers).

The goal of the project is to understand what North Carolina students between the ages of 11 and 15 think about technology, artificial intelligence (AI), and social media, especially in the school context. We are also interested in learning how these technologies influence children’s learning and general well-being, as well as how adults can help children learn to use these technologies appropriately.

The current study involves an online survey for youth that takes approximately 20-30 minutes and can be completed with either a smartphone, tablet, or laptop. Students who complete this study will receive a $30 Amazon gift card.

We will ask your child to answer questions about (1) their familiarity with and use of AI, technology, and social media, (2) their personality or how they tend to react in different situations, (3) their well-being, including things like sleep and exercise, and (4) school, including their academic plans for the future and how much they like their school.

We are offering an optional parent survey, which is an online survey that will take approximately 10-15 minutes to complete. This survey can also be completed with a smartphone, tablet, or laptop/computer.

Parents who complete this study will receive a $10 Amazon gift card.

If you decide to be in the optional parent survey, we will ask you to answer questions about (1) you and your child’s technology use, including social media, (2) your child’s well-being, including things like sleep and exercise, (3) how you and your child interact, (4) your background and your household, like whether you live in a rural area and how much education you have completed.

There is minimal risk associated with participating in the study. All personal information will be kept confidential, and your privacy willbe respected throughout the study. No individual results will be shared with anyone outside the research team.

Your child’s responses in the youth survey and your responses in the parent survey will be kept confidential, which means we cannot share their/your responses with anyone, including schools or the government. The research team will not disclose any information to any other persons or agencies. When the study is finished, the collected data may be made public for research purposes only, but no identifying information will be included in any publicly available datasets. You can request the results of our research at any time, but we will never provide any individual responses to you or anyone else.

Although you and your child will not benefit directly from the research results, your participation will help inform us about how these emerging technologies influence adolescent well-being. As you might know, a lot of parents and teachers are worried about the effects of technology on adolescents, and we hope our research will help answer some of these questions.

The consent you provide is valid for just this youth survey. We will also ask you if you would like for you and your child to be contacted to participate in future studies connected to this research study. If you say yes, we will contact you as future opportunities to participate arise at your preferred contact method. Until your child is 18 years old, we will always contact you first to provide your consent for them to participate.

Children aged 11-15 living in NC and enrolled in NC public schools were randomly selected for participation and your child was one of them. We are hoping to enroll youth from across the state. One parent per child is also eligible to complete the parent survey.

Before you decide if you want your child to participate in the study, you must read and sign an informed consent form. The informed consent includes some more detailed information for you and your child regarding the study so you can decide if your child should participate in the study.

You can withdraw from the study at any time. However, participants are only eligible for compensation after completion of the survey.