You are invited to participate in this study as you are currently a practicing or in training Canadian maternal healthcare provider. The primary purpose of this study is to learn about the attitudes and opinions that practicing and in-training maternal care providers have about body weight and obesity.

What’s Involved?
As a participant, you will be asked to complete a series of online questionnaires about body weight, including your opinions about discussing lifestyle behaviours with pregnant patients who have obesity. There are no right or wrong answers to these questions. We will also ask you some general demographics information which will be used to describe the sample as a whole. Participation should take approximately 15 minutes of your time. The questionnaire package will be completed online on the web survey, Qualtrics, at a time and location convenient for you.

Potential Benefits and Risks
There are no direct benefits for participating in this study. However, your participation in the study will provide quantifiable data to inform care of patients with obesity by maternal care providers including midwives, nurse practitioners, family physicians, and obstetricians.

You may experience some discomfort due to the nature of some of the questions asked; in this event you may contact The Canadian Mental Health Association at 1-866-531-2600 or http://ontario.cmha.ca/, or The Canadian Network for Can Change: Health Behaviour Change and Promotion at: https://can-change.ca/. You may also decline to answer any question(s) you are not comfortable with and can withdraw from the study at any point while completing the survey.

Confidentiality and Anonymity
Your data is anonymous and will be treated with confidentiality. If you choose to have your name and contact information entered in the draw to win 1 of 2 $100.00 gift cards for Amazon, your contact information will be stored separately from your data on a password protected device to which only the research team will have access to. After the draw is complete, all identifying information will be deleted. Access to the data will be restricted to the research team only.

Please note that we will keep your anonymous data indefinitely. All data will be kept on a password protected device. Where required by academic journals, anonymous data will be uploaded to a secure online repository to be used for verification purposes; this information will be retained indefinitely. If you do not wish for your data to be used by other researchers for verification purposes only, please do not participate. No identifying information will be shared to other researchers.

Voluntary Participation
Participation in this study is voluntary. If you wish, you may decline to answer any questions or participate in any component of the study. You may also decide to exit the survey at anytime by closing your browser window and your data will be withdrawn and removed from our analysis. To withdraw once you’ve started the questionnaire package, simply close the browser or do not submit the survey. If you wish to skip an entire page of questions, you may skip questions to the end of the page and select submit.

Publication of Results
The findings of this study will be released and may be published in professional academic journals and presented at conferences. If you wish to receive group feedback about the study results, please contact the principal investigator after June 2022 using the contact information included at the beginning of this form. If for any reason study results are not yet available, you will be informed of an updated date to recontact.

Contact Information and Ethics Clearance
If you have any questions about this study or require further information, please contact the Principal Investigator using the contact information provided above. If you have any questions about the study that you would like to ask before proceeding, please contact the Principal Investigator using the contact information provided above. This study has been reviewed and received ethics clearance through the Brock University Office of Research Ethics (File #21-117). If you have questions or concerns about your rights as a research participant, please contact the Office of Research Ethics at (905)-688-5550 Ext. 3035 or reb@brocku.ca.

Thank you for assistance in this study. Please retain a copy of this form for your records.



Dr. Taniya Singh Nagpal                                          Emily Bonisteel                                
Assistant Professor                                                   Undergraduate Honours Student              
Department of Kinesiology                                      Faculty of Applied Health Science 
Brock University                                                       Brock University                              
905-688-5550 (4062)                                                  eb18mo@brocku.ca                         
tnagpal@brocku.ca

Kirina Angrish
PhD Student
Faculty of Applied Health Sciences
Brock University
ka13wk@brocku.ca