Project Studying Online Safety Perceptions Through Grooming Scenarios Program Polytechnic Institute Term Academic Year 2025 Status Closed Research Area Global Security Description This project explores how people perceive the risk and blame in online grooming scenarios. Using a vignette-based design, the study assesses variables related to social media use and individual factors of the participants and vignettes. Our goal is to understand how these factors, in combination with Just World Belief, influence public perception of grooming risk. This work will inform educational, technological, and law enforcement strategies for identifying online grooming and addressing bias in risk detection. Supervisor Tatiana Renae Ringenberg Mentor Type of work required Help draft and refine vignette language for clarity and realism
Assist in formatting the survey in Qualtrics
Conduct pilot testing and note participant confusion or technical issues
Clean and organize raw survey data (e.g., removing incomplete responses)
Code and recode categorical variables (e.g., platform type, gender, etc.)
Help run and interpret basic statistical analyses Websites Qualifications Interest in online safety and digital communication Some experience with human subjects research, survey tools (like Qualtrics or Prolific), or statistical software (R, SPSS, Python) is a plus but not required Credit Hours 0 Weekly Hours 10 (estimated)