Article History
First Online: 11 December 2018
Compliance with Ethical Standards
:
: All authors declare that he/she has no conflict of interest.
: The study was presented to and received the approval of the Ethics Review Committee of the Faculty of Psychology and Neuroscience, Maastricht University. To support the participants, a qualified and experienced confidential counsellor was available. However, none of the participants made use of this option.
: The staff of LFB Zuidoost (a Self-Advocacy Group in the Netherlands) had contact with the groups (of participants) beforehand; the participants were informed about the study verbally. In addition, they received an informational folder about the study in advance. The dates for the two meetings were coordinated in mutual consultation. As a result, people who were not interested in the study were given the opportunity to indicate this and were not present on the planned dates. At the beginning of each meeting, the participants were informed about the aim, the rules and procedures with the aid of a PowerPoint presentation. In this way, the participants were informed multiple times about the study. The informed consent procedure was based on a procedure developed by Thomas and Kroes [CitationRef removed], see also [CitationRef removed]. Topics in this procedure were: goal of the meetings, confidentially, voluntariness, support. All participants signed a statement of consent. Following the two meetings, all participants received a certificate of participation and a report on the method and the outcomes of the meetings in which they had participated.