Is your love life an open (Face)book?

Researchers at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology’s School of Health and Biomedical Sciences are looking for your help with a new project examining issues of jealousy and surveillance on the Facebook social media platform.

Chief Investigator Associate Professor Sophia Xenos and Associate Investigator Dr Melissa Monfries are helping student researcher Jorja Fraser, an Honours student in Psychology, conduct the study as part of her thesis for her psychology degree.

In recent years, researchers have begun to investigate the impact of Facebook use on romantic relationships, given the effect it can have in stoking jealousy and interest in a partner’s social media use.  Previous research suggests that older people, or those in longer-term relationships are less prone to these effects.

Open Forum readers and others are invited to take part in a short, anonymous survey to gather data on these effects.  Participants do not need to be in a romantic relationship, and all information collected in the survey will be anonymous and non-identifiable.

All the results will be securely stored on password-protected servers at RMIT University and be accessible only to researchers. If the research is published, then this anonymous data may be stored indefinitely in a data repository.

This research project has been approved by the RMIT Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC) and the findings will be included in a report which forms part of the student researcher’s Honours degree in psychology at RMIT University.

You can take part in the survey here – it will take about 10 minutes to complete.

Thank you so much to everyone who participates!