Purpose and Objectives: The study aims to understand expert opinions and attitudes on fiscal solidarity. The survey includes questions regarding factors that may influence fiscal solidarity, such as demographics, political opinions, visions on the European Union (EU) and Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), etc. This idea is to control for these factors when we analyze the data. We target experts who work in Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Portugal.
Benefits: There is no monetary compensation for participating in the research. This study primarily benefits society by providing a better understanding of expert opinions on fiscal solidarity. At the end of the survey you may request a copy of the research report by providing your email address.
Voluntary Participation: Your participation in this research is completely voluntary. If you decide to participate, you may still withdraw at any time without any consequences or the need to provide any explanation (by not pressing the "submit responses" button at the end). You may also provide partial information by skipping questions.
Confidentiality: Your identity and responses are kept confidential. Research reports will not mention (or allow inference of) any participant identifiers.
Risks: One possible risk is that a researcher violates their pledge to keep the collected data confidential or misuses the information provided by a participant. This situation is obviously not foreseen and we manage this risk as outlined in "disposal of data" below. Furthermore, you may choose to skip individual survey questions that you prefer not to answer, and you may (at any moment) opt out by not pressing the "submit responses" button at the end, in which case your responses will not be included in the analysis.
Dissemination of Results: It is anticipated that the results of this study will be shared with others in the form of a published article. There may be additional article(s) or book chapters and the reports will also be presented at scholarly conferences and be shared with practitioners. Some results may be disseminated on a website.
Disposal of Data: The data will be used for academic purposes. The survey data will remain on (password protected) computers and server space of the research team of UVic – this server is located in Canada.
Once the researchers have collected the data, they will separate the survey data from any identifiers of the respondents, such as email addresses (at the end of the survey, respondents can request to receive a research report). Survey links will be permanently deleted. After this step, it will no longer be possible to connect the survey responses to the identity of the respondents. Only one member of the research team, Dr Paul Schure, will have access to the email addresses (as he will send out the research report). The survey data, without identifiers, will be kept for research purposes.
Contacts: The person to contact regarding this study is Dr Paul Schure (schure@uvic.ca) or Dr Amy Verdun (averdun@uvic.ca). In addition, you may verify the ethical approval of this study, or raise any concerns you might have, by contacting the UVic Human Research Ethics Office (+1 250-472-4545 or ethics@uvic.ca. Refer to HE Cert.# 16-162).
Consent: By starting the survey you agree to have been sufficiently informed, that you understand the above conditions of participation, and that you have had the opportunity to have any questions answered. Again, even after you have started the survey, you can still opt out should you desire to.
Many thanks in advance!
Pompeo Della Posta and Paul Schure