Confidentiality

Spirited Life: Selah is being made available to NC UMC clergy regardless of their health status or current experiences with stress, and no human is immune from stress. For those reasons, there should be no stigma associated with participating in Selah. 

Data submitted through surveys, biometric measures, daily reporting, and interviews will be kept confidential. You will not be identified (in public or to your conference) by name, address, conference appointment, or any other direct personal identifier with any of your health data or survey responses. Your research record will be assigned a unique code number. The key to the code will be held by Duke and will be kept separate from the research database. Your de-identified health and survey data will be kept in a secure password-protected database and will continue to be used for research purposes, including studies not yet planned. We plan to link data gathered in this survey with data gathered in other phases of the project or initiative, and to demographic data provided by the conferences. Duke will destroy all study records containing identifying data seven years after the last publication yielded by the study. Data files with identifying information stripped out may be retained indefinitely by Duke. Data without names will be analyzed by Clergy Health Initiative research staff, as well as faculty and research staff of the Duke Global Health Institute. While the findings resulting from this study may be reported to the Conferences or other church bodies, presented at scientific meetings, or published in a scientific journal, no individual participant will be identified.

Click here to download the consent form for Selah.