I am the IRB chair at our small liberal arts college. I have a bunch of
IRB websites from other colleges and NIH but I can't find the piece of
information I need.
This is the issue: students in a political science class want to mail
(names from the phone book) a questionnaire asking about political
opinions and voting behavior. The only sensitive question is income
(indicated within $20000 intervals). Our standard procedure is to have
participants sign and return the informed consent form. It would
typically be returned in a different envelope from the questionnaire to
keep the questionnaire anonymous. This procedure is too expensive for
the students (paying for two return envelopes). Thus the question: can
the participant consent without a signature? Can you say something like
"by completing and returning this questionnaire you have consented to
participate in this study"? A related question: if this procedure is
ethical, then why ever have people sign informed consent forms for
simple attitude questionnaires such as this?
Marie
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Marie Helweg-Larsen, Ph.D.
Program Director & Assistant Professor of Psychology
Transylvania University
300 North Broadway
Lexington, KY 40508-1797
Office: (859) 281-3656
Web page: http://www.transy.edu/homepages/mhelweglarsen/index2.html
