Principles Of Informed Consent

Informed consent has been a central topic in bioethics for many years with the creation of international and federal principles serving as guidelines to define what ‘informed consent’ is and regulate actions to be followed by all involved in human subject research. The creation of the Belmont Report introduced three basic principles. One of those three principles, respect for persons is the most essential to the informed consent process. This principle outlines how individuals should be treated as autonomous and protects those who have diminished autonomy with additional protections. Respect for persons implies potential participants in research projects must be given relevant information in a format they understand to aid the decision of whether or not to participate.
Potential factors contributing to bias include age, race and ethnicity, gender of the research presenter and consistency of the language used while obtaining informed consent among different presenters. Since, subject comprehension of a research project is based on the information presented with in oral and written form. It is of vital importance to investigate if the differences in oral presentation of informed consent and presenters can contribute to the decision about research participation. Due to the lack of research participation in minority and low socioeconomic groups, it is essential to understand why these individuals choose not to