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CATEGORY/THEME: Research, Policy, and Practice
TITLE: Protect right or silence voice? The effect of requiring parental consent on adolescents’ report of risk behaviors: A meta-analysis
ABSTRACT BODY:
Introduction: The requirement of informed consent from parents is an established federal regulation that aims to protect minors from potential harms or risks introduced by research. The U.S. Department of Education, Institutional Review Boards (IRBs), and local school boards have increasingly required more stringent consent procedures as the result of environmental and statutory changes. The reason could be attributed to the assumption that minors are not capable to consent to research involving risk behaviors and therefore a more capable representative is needed. Regardless of validity of this assumption, requiring parental consent may result in a sampling bias that confounds scientific conclusions and stifles the representation in research of the children most at risk for adverse outcomes, which is a social justice issue. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether the requirement of parental consent (i.e., active consent procedure), compared with the waiver of parental consent (i.e., passive consent procedure), creates a bias in demographic makeup and risk-related outcomes of the sample.
Methods: This study used five computerized databases ERIC, PsycINFO, MEDLINE, PubMed and ProQuest to search for peer-reviewed articles and unpublished dissertations between 1975 and 2015. The following keywords were used for the search: (active consent OR informed consent OR parental consent) AND (passive consent OR waiver of consent) AND (risk behavior) AND (adolescen*). Fifteen studies were identified with a total number of 146,378 children.
Results: There were three primary results from this study: (a) response rates were significantly lower for studies using active consent procedure than those using passive consent procedure (Z=3.47, p<.01); (b) more girls were included in studies using active consent procedures than studies using passive procedures (Z= -2.65, p<.01); and (c) studies with active consent procedures showed higher rates of self-reported substance use than studies using passive consent procedures (Z=3.22, p<.01).
Conclusion: Requiring parental consent can lead to a systematic bias in the sample and to an inordinate reduction of the representation that certain populations have on the findings in the research literature. IRB committees should collaborate with researchers to find solutions that protect minors without silencing the voice of high-risk youth in the literature.