A cross-sectional audit of informed consent of online survey: Characteristics and adherence to prevalent guidelines.

BACKGROUND

Research on human participants requires formal approval from a competent ethics committee. During the recruitment of the research participants, obtaining informed consent is a prerequisite. The online survey method is used by many researchers as it can collect the data from a diverse population in a short time.

AIM

This study aimed to observe the characteristics and adherence to prevalent guidelines (set by the [ICMR]) of informed consent coupled with online surveys.

METHODS

We collected the informed consent text from online survey links obtained from a network of colleagues who got a request to participate in a survey. Data were collected from July 2020 to June 2022. The text was anonymized for further analysis. The word count, sentences, and Flesch reading ease score were calculated. The adherence to ICMR guidelines where checked by two authors individually and a consensus was reached to prepare the final result.

RESULTS

A total of 44 online surveys in English were audited and among them, 10 did not have informed consent. The informed consent in 34 surveys had a median of 6 sentences and 84 words. The median reading ease score was 45.7 (college level). The majority of the consent states the purpose of the research (91.18%), the voluntary nature of the participation (85.29%), and mentioned that it is research (64.71%). However, the rest of the components are ignored by the majority of the survey consent form.

CONCLUSION

Informed consent form with online surveys lacks adherence to the components suggested by ICMR. Hence, the forms should be made carefully by the researchers so that the vigor of informed consent is maintained in the online surveys.