Does an interactive consent procedure better inform participants?

How can you ensure that participants in online studies are truly well-informed? Psychologists Marije aan het Rot and Ineke Wessel recently explored this question. Their research, recently published in the Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics, focused on the effectiveness of interactive consent procedures compared to the traditional approach, where participants only read a text.

The study examined two methods. In the traditional approach, participants were presented with five pages of information before giving their consent. The interactive method, on the other hand, required participants to answer two questions after each page to check if the information was understood correctly.

After completing the consent procedure, participants were tested with twenty questions. Half of these questions had already been asked to the interactive group, while the other half were new for everyone. The results? Participants who went through the interactive procedure significantly better answered the previously asked questions than those who had only read the text. However, they did not score better on the new questions.

Aan het Rot and Wessel conclude that an interactive consent procedure can be particularly useful when the focus is on the most important risks and how to manage them. This is crucial from an ethical and privacy standpoint, especially in studies involving higher risks.

Read more