The Pave Project Report - Queen's University Belfast

The PAVE Project Report 31
PROCEDURE
A
gate-keeper approach was used to access participants (Erickson, 1982). This
means that chairpersons of victims groups were contacted and asked to
approach service users to participate in the research. Times and places for
administration of the research instrument were arranged to suit services users. In the
main, meetings were arranged in the groups’ drop-in centres. The research instrument
was handed to each participant by one of the researchers, completed in the presence of
the researcher, and returned immediately after completion. In most cases, this was
done in a group setting, although where individual participants required assistance
with completion of the instrument this was done in a one-to-one setting (n=5). Postal
questionnaires were issued where this was preferred.
Those who agreed to participate were given a participant information and consent
sheet (Appendix 2). Only those who signed the consent sheet took part in the study.
At the initial assessment point (A1), participants completed the PEIT-Q, GHQ-30,
BDI-II, and PDS. After approximately 3-4 monthly, they were asked to complete a
shortened version of the PEIT-Q (i.e., identify the services they had received since the
last application of inventory), the adapted SLES (i.e., identify life events that
happened since the last application of inventory), as well as the three other
psychometric inventories (A2). This procedure was repeated twice (A3 and A4),
giving a total of 4 completed inventory scores (i.e., GHQ-30, BDI-II, and PDS) per
participant, over a period of nine to twelve months.