Its one thing to submit ethical applications stating potential participants will be given sufficient information to make an informed decision but in reality, ensuring this happens can be challenging for many reasons include language and cultural differences of researchers and participants; ensuring that participants fully understand what the researcher is investigating. Therefore, my question asks if there are shared principles that researchers should abide by to ensure that they give potential research participants every opportunity to make an informed decision.
hi Winifred,
According to the Belmont Report, there are 3 core principles that researchers dealing with human subjects should take into account. Beneficience, Justice and Respect for persons. I am not going into the details here. If you are interested, you may look it up on google. A plethora of material is available.
If you are working with a community whose language you do not speak/write, you have to get the consent form translated in that language.
Details about the project should be clearly mentioned, that participation is voluntary should be highlighted. In case any compensation is offered, that too should be mentioned. The researcher's contact number should also be mentioned.
Some of these information may make the informed consent coherent.
Hello Sohini
Thank you for your contribution - I totally agree and endorse your response and hope and wish that these standards are upheld by researchers. My experience of carrying out research with a community affected by sickle cell and thalassaemia where English was not the first language of some of my participants there was the need to not only have research materials translated but also to ensure that the back translation was accurate. Translating medical related terminologies is not so easy and researchers need to be particularly careful to ensure that their translations are accurate and fit for purpose. I reported on some of the issues I encountered in my research in the following paper:
Lost words: research via translation. Winifred Oluchukwu Eboh, Emma Pitchforth, Edwin van Teijlingen. RCM midwives: the official journal of the Royal College of Midwives 10/2007; 10(8):374-7.
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