One of my kids was invited to participate in a research study. For this minimal-risk study, the research team emailed parents a five-page PDF consent form. Parents were asked to print the form, sign it, and send it back to school with their children.
If there’s one thing we’ve learned in our 15+ years of conducting research, it’s this: You have to make participation AS SIMPLE AS POSSIBLE with MINIMAL BURDEN to participants.
I’m not being overly dramatic when I say the research team will likely lose half of its potential sample because they’ve made the consenting process unnecessarily complicated. I’m also not being overly dramatic when I say that this approach will generate meaningful bias in their sample.
A colleague introduced me to the term “soft excluding,” which occurs when the barriers to research participation disproportionately impact children and families with fewer resources.
I can’t think of a better real-life example of “soft excluding” than making informed consent overly burdensome.
Here’s how we ease barriers to participation by making the informed consent process as simple as possible:
- Use electronic consent for minimal-risk studies. Participants can provide consent with just a few clicks, and they won’t even be annoyed.
- Streamline the consent form. Work with your Institutional Review Board (IRB) to determine which consent language is absolutely necessary. In our experience, we’ve reduced consent forms to a few short, accessible paragraphs.
When you honor participants’ time and effort from your very first interaction and treat it with genuine gratitude, you’ll get better participation and higher-quality data.
