Do Undergraduate Student Research Participants Read Psychological Research Consent Forms? Examining Memory Effects, Condition Effects, and Individual Differences

Although research has examined factors influencing understanding of informed consent in biomedical and forensic research, less is known about participants' attention to details in consent documents in psychological survey research. The present study used a randomized experimental design and found the majority of participants were unable to recall information from the consent form in both in-person and online formats. Participants were also relatively poor at recognizing important aspects of the consent form including risks to participants and confidentiality procedures. Memory effects and individual difference characteristics also appeared to influence recall and recognition of consent form information.

[1]  D. Marlowe,et al.  A new scale of social desirability independent of psychopathology. , 1960, Journal of consulting psychology.

[2]  E. Deci,et al.  Overview of self-determination theory: An organismic-dialectical perspective. , 2002 .

[3]  S. Gosling,et al.  A very brief measure of the Big-Five personality domains , 2003 .

[4]  P. Appelbaum,et al.  Competency to consent to research: a psychiatric overview. , 1982, Archives of general psychiatry.

[5]  J. Arnett.  The neglected 95%: why American psychology needs to become less American. , 2008, The American psychologist.

[6]  Adrian Furnham,et al.  Relationship among Four Big Five Measures of Different Length , 2008, Psychological reports.

[7]  M. Silva,et al.  Enhancing comprehension of information for informed consent: a review of empirical research. , 1988, IRB.

[8]  Mark Sadoski,et al.  Imagery and Text: A Dual Coding Theory of Reading and Writing , 2000 .

[9]  B. Cassileth,et al.  Informed consent -- why are its goals imperfectly realized? , 1980, The New England journal of medicine.

[10]  I. Olver,et al.  Improving informed consent to chemotherapy: a randomized controlled trial of written information versus an interactive multimedia CD-ROM. , 2009, Patient education and counseling.

[11]  D C McCrory,et al.  Getting Meaningful Informed Consent from Older Adults: A Structured Literature Review of Empirical Research , 1998, Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.

[12]  S. Levinson,et al.  WEIRD languages have misled us, too , 2010, Behavioral and Brain Sciences.

[13]  H. Hodgins,et al.  Autonomy and control motivation and self-esteem , 2007 .

[14]  S. Gosling,et al.  Should we trust web-based studies? A comparative analysis of six preconceptions about internet questionnaires. , 2004, The American psychologist.

[15]  P S Appelbaum,et al.  Assessing patients' capacities to consent to treatment. , 1988, The New England journal of medicine.

[16]  Edward L. Deci,et al.  An Instrument to Assess Adults' Orientations toward Control versus Autonomy with Children: Reflections on Intrinsic Motivation and Perceived Competence. , 1981 .

[17]  R. Koestner,et al.  On the Compatibility of Autonomy and Relatedness , 1996 .

[18]  C. Daugherty.  Impact of therapeutic research on informed consent and the ethics of clinical trials: a medical oncology perspective. , 1999, Journal of clinical oncology : official journal of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

[19]  B. Kroese,et al.  Assessing the ability of people with a learning disability to give informed consent to treatment , 1999, Psychological Medicine.

[20]  Who understands? A survey of 25 words or phrases commonly used in proposed clinical research consent forms. , 1995, IRB.

[21]  J. Stöber.  The Social Desirability Scale-17 (SDS-17): Convergent Validity, Discriminant Validity, and Relations , 2001 .

[22]  D. Kaloupek,et al.  Overview of research addressing ethical dimensions of participation in traumatic stress studies: autonomy and beneficence. , 2009, Journal of traumatic stress.

[23]  E. Deci,et al.  A meta-analytic review of experiments examining the effects of extrinsic rewards on intrinsic motivation. , 1999, Psychological bulletin.

[24]  E. Deci,et al.  The "What" and "Why" of Goal Pursuits: Human Needs and the Self-Determination of Behavior , 2000 .

[25]  Joseph A. Konstan,et al.  The Challenges of Ensuring Participant Consent in Internet-based Sex Studies: A Case Study of the Men's INTernet Sex (MINTS-I and II) Studies , 2009, J. Comput. Mediat. Commun..

[26]  J. Lieberman,et al.  Ethics in psychiatric research : a resource manual for human subjects protection , 1999 .

[27]  Connie K. Varnhagen,et al.  How Informed Is Online Informed Consent? , 2005, Ethics & behavior.

[28]  Frank J. Bernieri,et al.  Self-Regulation and Consistency between Attitudes, Traits, and Behaviors , 1992 .

[29]  S. Iso-Ahola,et al.  Determinants of Parents' Sideline-Rage Emotions and Behaviors at Youth Soccer Games , 2008 .

[30]  D. Jeste,et al.  Decision-making capacity for informed consent in the older population. , 1995, The Bulletin of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law.

[31]  Michael S. Wogalter.  On the adequacy of legal documents: factors that influence informed consent , 1999 .

[32]  C. Knee,et al.  The integrating self and conscious experience , 2002 .

[33]  C. Neighbors,et al.  Self‐Determination, Perception of Peer Pressure, and Drinking Among College Students1 , 2002 .

[34]  Paul T. Costa,et al.  Personality in Adulthood: A Five-Factor Theory Perspective , 2005 .

[35]  V. Strecher.  Internet methods for delivering behavioral and health-related interventions (eHealth). , 2007, Annual review of clinical psychology.

[36]  C. Neighbors,et al.  Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin Neighbors Et Al. / Motivation and Driving Anger a Motivational Model of Driving Anger and Aggression , 2022 .

[37]  E. Deci,et al.  The general causality orientations scale: Self-determination in personality , 1985 .

[38]  P. Appelbaum,et al.  The therapeutic misconception: informed consent in psychiatric research. , 1982, International journal of law and psychiatry.

[39]  C. B. Colby.  The weirdest people in the world , 1973 .

[40]  W. Grolnick,et al.  Motivational factors related to differences in self-schemas , 1995 .

[41]  D. Tucker.  Assessing Competence to Consent to Treatment: A Guide for Physicians and Other Health Professionals , 1998 .

[42]  C. Fisher,et al.  Assessing and Enhancing the Research Consent Capacity of Children and Youth , 2003 .

[43]  James Flory,et al.  Interventions to improve research participants' understanding in informed consent for research: a systematic review. , 2004, JAMA.

[44]  M. Banaji,et al.  Psychological. , 2015, The journals of gerontology. Series B, Psychological sciences and social sciences.

[45]  J. Stöber.  Die Soziale-Erwünschtheits-Skala-17 (SES-17): Entwicklung und erste Befunde zu Reliabilität und Validität , 1999 .

[46]  N. Weinstein,et al.  The Moderating Role of Autonomy and Control on the Benefits of Written Emotion Expression , 2009, Personality & social psychology bulletin.

[47]  John L. Smith,et al.  Using the Internet for psychological research: personality testing on the World Wide Web. , 1999, British journal of psychology.

[48]  M. Hagen,et al.  Ethical principles of psychologists and code of conduct. , 2002, The American psychologist.

[49]  K D Hopper,et al.  Interactive method of informing patients of the risks of intravenous contrast media. , 1994, Radiology.

[50]  Jane S. Paulsen,et al.  Capacity to provide informed consent for participation in schizophrenia and HIV research. , 2002, The American journal of psychiatry.