Dear Participant,



You are invited to participate in the research project identified above. This research will be conducted by Dr Danielle Wagstaff, and students Caitlin Anthony, Sukie Hodgson and Faith Thavaneswaran of the School of Health Sciences and Psychology at Federation University Australia.



The purpose of this study is to explore how social media use affects how you perceive yourself, and how your perception of yourself affects your social media use. This study is entirely anonymous, meaning we have no way of knowing who has completed the survey.



If you decide to participate, you will be asked answer some questions such as your social media use, perceptions of your body image/self-esteem, relationship satisfaction, selfie behaviour, exposure to social media trends (fitness images, beauty images) and body image/self-esteem. You may also be presented with some Instagram posts and asked to view and comment on these. The survey will take approximately 20-30 minutes to complete.



Participation in this study is voluntary. Due to the anonymous nature of the questionnaire, once you have moved forward or closed the survey, we will have no way to withdraw your data. PLEASE NOTE: we are asking about your perceptions of yourself and your body. You are not obliged to answer any questions in this survey, so you may leave questions blank if you wish. If you do feel uncomfortable, particularly regarding questions about your body image, please contact a support service such as Lifeline (13 11 14) or Beyond Blue / Youth Beyond Blue (1300 22 4636).



The information in this survey will be used for research purposes and may be presented in scientific journals or scientific conferences. The data from this survey may be made available to other researchers on open-access data repositories for future research. By continuing to the survey, this means that you agree you have read and understand this information statement. If you have any concerns, please contact the researcher from the details below. If you would like to know about the results of this study, please contact the principal researcher. A summary of results will be sent once available (November, 2018).



This research has been approved by the Federation University Australia HREC, approval number: A18-039