Rick Adams wrote:
"But when we carry this to the current point--that of requiring
parental consent before a college student can be asked questions that are
strictly demographic in nature and no more intimate than the questions at
the end
of a typical appliance warranty registration form, haven't we reached
the point of absurdity?"
I don't believe anyone is advocating for *parental* consent from college
students.
The question asked was in regards to obtaining passive consent from parents
of elementary-aged students. Typically, the age of consent is given as 18.
Now, it gets tricky if you are asking first semester college freshmen to
participate in research. It is possible that you will get a 17-year-old
frosh
who wants to participate. My initial reaction would be to obtain parental
consent just to be on the safe side.
My reasoning behind this position is that, legally, the parent is still the
holder of the privilege of the child. In today's litigious society, it is
foolhardy to play the research equivalent of Russian Roulette with
participants'
parents. I would not want to draw the one 17-year-old who has a parent who,
for whatever reason, did not want his or her son to participate in the
research.
Ethically and legally, the researcher who allowed the 17-year-old to
participate
without parental consent has a much tougher stance to defend than the
researcher
who obtained consent.
While I understand that informed consent is for the protection of the
participants,
it can serve as a protection for the researcher and institution as well, and
I
think that researchers who do not consider some of the legal aspects of what
they
are doing put their careers and their institutions at risk. And, having been
witness to a couple of close calls on instances that were not entirely the
researcher's
fault, I would not want to be part of one that was.
--Rick Grieve
