Camino Institute™ — Research Participation Consent

Version 1.0 | April 2026 Status: Draft — attorney + Walter Calvo review required before publishing. Page URL: camino.to/research-consent Version of Privacy Policy this consent operates under: v2.0 (April 2026).

Legal review note for attorney. This is a fresh draft — there is no prior research consent document in the canonical Notion build package. The Notion onboarding spec marked the research-consent screen language as "pending Walter final approval." This document is the consent text that participants actively select at enrollment (it is not pre-checked). It operates alongside the Privacy Policy (v2.0) and the Qualitative Research Corpus Data Storage Specification (Notion canonical, March 2026).

Specific review needs:

1. Adequacy under U.S. research-ethics expectations even though Camino Institute is not currently operating under a registered IRB (the pilot is small and not federally funded — confirm this is acceptable for the pilot scale; if a future scale-up requires IRB, a new consent will be drafted).

2. Texas-law alignment for research consent involving sensitive personal-development data.

3. The withdrawal mechanism in Section 6 — confirm "anonymized data already published cannot be retroactively removed" is enforceable and clearly disclosed.

4. Walter Calvo's authorship of qualitative analyses and any future publications based on the research corpus — confirm the consent adequately authorizes this.

5. The distinction in Section 2 between assessment data (TDCSA scores, CTI) and conversational content — only the former is included in the research corpus; the latter is not. Confirm this distinction is clear enough that participants understand what is and is not being shared.

6. The active-select requirement (the consent checkbox is unchecked by default) — confirm this satisfies informed-consent expectations under both Texas law and broader research-ethics norms.

Research Participation Consent

Effective for participants enrolling on or after: [Date — set by attorney before publishing]

This document describes Camino Institute's instrument validation research and asks whether you wish to contribute your anonymized data to that research. Your participation in research is optional. You are not required to participate, and your access to Camino Lumen™ or Lexica™ is not conditioned on your decision.

If you wish to participate, you will actively select the consent checkbox at enrollment. The checkbox is unchecked by default. You may withdraw your consent at any time without losing access to the Platform.

1. Who is conducting this research

Camino Institute, LLC is conducting this research. The Clinical Director and lead investigator is Walter Calvo, LCSW, DBA, a licensed clinical social worker and the Co-Founder of Camino Institute.

The research is internal — meaning it is conducted by Camino Institute's own team, primarily for the purpose of validating and refining our proprietary assessment instruments and the methodologies underlying Camino Lumen™ and Lexica™. We are not currently operating under an external Institutional Review Board (IRB) for this pilot. If our research scope expands beyond pilot validation, we will revise this consent and seek appropriate institutional oversight before continuing.

2. What we are studying

We are studying the Three-Dimensional Coherence Self-Assessment (TDCSA) and the Camino Transformation Index (CTI) — two psychometric instruments developed by Walter Calvo for measuring change across three dimensions: Identity, Worldview, and Relationship. The pilot research is designed to:

• Validate the internal consistency, test-retest reliability, and dimensional structure of the TDCSA.
• Validate the CTI calculation as a meaningful index of inter-dimensional coherence change over time.
• Examine pre/post change patterns across Camino Lumen™ (entry program) and Lexica™ (21-day language-transformation sprint).
• Examine the relationship between vocabulary adoption rate during Lexica™ and TDCSA score change.

These findings may be used in:

• Internal Camino Institute methodology refinement.
• Walter Calvo's doctoral or post-doctoral research outputs.
• Academic publications, conference presentations, or industry talks authored by Walter Calvo or other Camino Institute personnel.

3. What data is included in the research corpus

If you consent, the following data is included in the research corpus:

• Your TDCSA item-level responses (the 1–5 Likert values you select for each of the 40 items at the end of Camino Lumen™ and at Day 21 of Lexica™).
• Your computed TDCSA subscale scores (Identity, Worldview, Relationship) and the TDCI composite.
• Your CTI composite and dimension deltas.
• Your Lexica™ vocabulary adoption rate at each session (a number between 0 and 1).
• Your Camino Pacing System level trajectory during Lexica™ (a number between 1 and 10 per session).
• Demographic information you have voluntarily provided at enrollment (age range, prior self-development experience). We do not collect race, ethnicity, gender identity, or other protected demographic categories at the pilot scale.

Each piece of data in the research corpus is anonymized before inclusion. Your name, email address, account ID, payment information, and any identifying free-text content are stripped or replaced with a research participant ID before the data enters the research data set. The research participant ID is not linkable to your identity outside of a key held only by Walter Calvo.

4. What data is NOT included in the research corpus

The following data is not included in the research corpus, even if you consent:

• The text of your reflections — your conversation content with the AI is private to your account and is not included in the research data set.
• Your Personal Insight Snapshot™ content, your Close Document content, your journal entries, or your re-entry messages. None of these enter the research corpus.
• Your individual memory records (the AI's structured memory of your reflections).
• Walter's coaching session notes (those are part of his clinical record, not research).
• Your name, email, payment info, or any direct identifier.

If at a future date Camino Institute proposes to include qualitative content (such as anonymized excerpts from reflection conversations) in the research corpus, a new consent will be drafted, and you will need to actively re-consent. Your current consent does not extend to qualitative content.

5. How long the research data is retained

Research data with your consent is retained as part of the research corpus for as long as the research is active. Anonymized derivatives (e.g., aggregated statistics, instrument-validation results published in academic outputs) may be retained indefinitely as part of the academic record.

If you cancel your account, your account data and program content follow the standard retention schedule in our Privacy Policy (90 days, then deletion). Anonymized research derivatives that have already been incorporated into research outputs do not get retroactively removed, because they have already been de-identified and are typically aggregated with data from other participants.

6. Withdrawing your consent

You may withdraw your research consent at any time by emailing privacy@camino.to. Withdrawal:

• Removes you from the research corpus going forward. From the moment we process your withdrawal, no further data from your account enters the research corpus.
• Removes pre-aggregation data already in the corpus. Anonymized data we still hold in raw research form (i.e., not yet incorporated into a publication or aggregated analysis) is deleted from the corpus within 30 days.
• Does not affect your access to the program. Your account, your reflections, and your program access continue as normal.
• Does not retroactively remove data from already-published research outputs. Anonymized statistics, validation findings, or aggregated patterns already incorporated into publications cannot be unpublished.

7. Risks and benefits

Risks. The research corpus contains anonymized data only. The risk of re-identification from the corpus alone is low — your name and email are not in the corpus, and the research participant ID is not linkable to your identity outside the key held by Walter Calvo. The most realistic risk is in the rare case of a security breach affecting the research key; in such a case, Camino Institute would notify affected participants per our security disclosure obligations.

Benefits. There are no direct benefits to you from research participation beyond the program participation itself. The indirect benefit is contributing to the validation of an instrument and methodology that may help other adults engaged in personal-development work in the future.

8. Costs and compensation

There is no additional cost for research participation beyond the program enrollment fees described in our Terms of Service (Camino Lumen™ $97, Lexica™ $197, coaching sessions $197 each, package deal $294). There is no compensation for research participation; participation is voluntary.

9. Confidentiality and data handling

The research corpus is stored on Camino Institute's infrastructure (Hostinger managed Postgres) with the same encryption practices described in our Privacy Policy:

• Encryption at rest (AES-256-GCM).
• Encryption in transit (TLS 1.2+).
• Access restricted to Walter Calvo and authorized Camino Institute personnel.

Research-corpus queries enforce a research_consent = TRUE filter at the database query layer, so participants who have not consented (or who have withdrawn consent) cannot accidentally appear in research analyses.

10. Your rights

You have the right to:

• Receive a copy of this consent at any time.
• Request a summary of how your anonymized data has been used.
• Withdraw your research consent at any time (Section 6).
• Contact Walter Calvo, LCSW, DBA directly with questions about the research at clinical@camino.to.
• Contact Camino Institute about your data at privacy@camino.to.

11. Consent

By actively selecting the "I consent to research participation as described above" checkbox at enrollment, you confirm:

• You are at least 18 years old.
• You have read and understand this Research Participation Consent.
• You voluntarily agree to contribute your anonymized assessment data, vocabulary adoption rate, and AA temperature trajectory to Camino Institute's instrument validation research as described in Sections 2 and 3.
• You understand that your reflection conversations, journal entries, Snapshot, and Close Document are not part of the research corpus.
• You understand you may withdraw your consent at any time without losing program access (Section 6).
• You understand that anonymized data already incorporated into published research outputs cannot be retroactively removed.

If you do not consent, simply leave the checkbox unselected at enrollment. Your decision will not affect your access to Camino Lumen™ or Lexica™.

12. Contact

For questions about the research: Walter Calvo, LCSW, DBA — Clinical Director and lead investigator clinical@camino.to

For questions about your data or this consent: privacy@camino.to

For general program questions: support@camino.to

Camino Institute, LLC San Antonio, Texas

© 2026 Camino Institute™. All rights reserved.