Yes! MyVoice is a national text messaging poll of youth aged 14 to 24. This study has been approved by the University of Michigan Institutional Review Board (MyVoice – Real-Time Text Messaging Polling to Give Adolescents a Voice: HUM00119982).

View our current consent form here.

In order to participate, you must be between the ages of 14 to 24, live in the United States, and have an active cell phone number.

If you register to participate in MyVoice and are eligible, we will text you 2-5 questions each week (for 12 weeks in a row), on a different topic. All you have to do is text us back your opinions and thoughts.

Our questions focus on health- and policy-related issues that are important to young people. Sometimes, we’ll also ask you about news happening in real time, like pop culture and current events.

You’ll be paid in the form of Amazon gift cards. You’ll earn $5 for completing the sign up form, and then $1 per poll that you complete. Your Amazon gift card credit will be texted to you as a code every 12 weeks. If you complete all 12 weeks, you get a $3 bonus! That adds up to as much as $15 every three months. Not bad for just texting us your opinion 😉

All MyVoice data (including text message responses, name and address information) are kept strictly confidential. We never release individual information about any participant to anyone for any reason, period. We do not sell, rent or lend our contact information to any other group. Only MyVoice staff, who perform updates to the files and send out text messages, have access to your contact information.

We store all the text messages responses on an online database with a very high level of security. Companies like Apple and Ebay trust this database service to keep their data secure. Only our study team has access to the data.

MyVoice is an IRB-approved study (IRB HUM00119982) from the University of Michigan, led by Dr. Tammy Chang, MD, MPH, MS, associate professor of family medicine. Download the full IRB consent form (PDF) for additional information. Reach out to the study team anytime at hear.my.voice@umich.edu.

Speaking of confidentiality, most of the time there will not be a human looking at your responses. We are going to use a computer to analyze it and learn from you!  This means that if you have an urgent question about the study, make sure to contact us using the information on the “contact us” page.

You will get your first Amazon credit payment after the completion of the first 12 weeks of surveys. This means that at the end of the first 12 surveys, you can earn up to $20 per survey season = $5 + $12 (dollar per survey) + $3 bonus if you answer every survey in the season. If you don’t answer all 12 weeks, you will still be paid with the rest of the MyVoice cohort, and the end of the 12 weeks. There are several survey seasons–which means you can earn up to $60 per year.

Just text back the word STOP to our questions. You will not get any more text messages from our study. Thanks for participating!

No problem! Just contact us and let us know your new phone number! Call, text or email us at hear.my.voice@umich.edu or 734-249-9276.

Feel free to skip it by just texting “skip”. We do not want you to feel uncomfortable at any point. And don’t worry, you will still get credit for completing that week’s questions even if you skip questions. If you have any feedback for us about any of the questions, email or text us at hear.my.voice@umich.edu or 734-249-9276.

Good question! We try to ask questions about the things that are important to you and you might even notice we ask you what those things are! We also have a bunch of researchers and young people on our team who are interested in different topics. Please let us know if we miss a topic that is important or affects you! We would love to hear from you!

We might ask you some sensitive questions. You might not want other people to see your responses to these questions. You could either lock your phone with a password or delete the text messages you send us afterwards.

Email or text us at hear.my.voice@umich.edu or 734-249-9276 and we will get back to you!