A randomised controlled trial of the impact of the 'Man Up' documentary on men’s intentions to seek help

Brief name: ‘Man up’ Documentary Our project is based on the premise that the degrees to which men conform to traditionally held views of masculinity (such as stoicism, reliance on self, and avoidance of expression of emotion) can be changed, and that this will ultimately enhance their wellbeing. A three-part documentary has been developed in collaboration with our sub-contractor, Heiress Films, that will explore the impact of masculinity on mental health in Australia. It will be shown on free-to-air television in October 2016. Prior to the the screening of the documentary this randomised controlled trial will be undertaken to evaluate the imapct of the documentary on male viewers. Adult male participants will attend a group meeting (maximum 20 participants) with the researchers participants, wherein they will individually complete baseline questionnaire measures on individual ipads (Time 1). These meetings will mostly take place at the researcher’s offices on campus in central Melbourne. Some meetings will also take place in outer suburban and regional Victorian locations. At the end of the meeting participants will then be randomly allocated to either view the documentary (intervention) or view an unrelated documentary (control) and emailed a web link to the documentary so that they can watch it at home. The documentary is in three parts of one hour each. Participants will use the link provided to access the documentary online and will view it at home, or other convenient place, either alone or with immediate family/household members. They will be asked to view the documentary within one week of their meeting with researchers. Immediately after viewing they will be asked a few questions about their impression of the documentary, also online (Time 2). Four weeks after viewing the documentary they will again be asked to complete an online questionnaire via email (Time 3). This questionnaire will repeat the baseline measures and will also ask for some qualitative feedback regarding the documentary. Participants will be asked to complete this questionnaire within two weeks of receiving it. Study conditions in the control arm of the study will be the same as those in the intervention arm, with the exception of the documentary that they view. Participants within arms will each experience the same study conditions. Adherence to the trial method will be assessed in two ways. The dates that each participant completes each stage of the trial (Time 1, 2,3) will be automatically recorded at each stage, so that we can determine if participants completed these stages within the requested time frames. In order to determine whether participants viewed the documentary there will be a series of ‘test questions’ asked at the end of their viewing at Time 2.