As I was looking at articles concerning the effects of
research on children or families I came across the article titled Factors influencing parental consent for
participation in clinical research involving their children in Egypt. After reading the title I thought it definitely
related to what we were learning about this week and would be interesting to
find out the results. The purpose of
this study was to determine the rate of parents’ consent to participation in
clinical research involving their child and to evaluate factors that influenced
parents’ consent (Nasef,
Shabaan, Mohammed, Kandel, Settin, Zedan, & Fouda, 2014). In this study only 27.5% of parents consented
to involving their child in research. The
most important factors increasing the chances of parental consent were if the
research was a clear benefit to the child, if the parents received enough
explanation of the research concept from the staff and to learn more about the disease. One huge limitation of this study was that
they “did
not propose a specific type of research design to the parents or a specific
pattern of patient disease, and this may have made our results more of a
subjective parental opinion rather than an actual decision about consent or
refusal” (Nasef, et al., 2014, p. 168).
I definitely believe if the parents had a specific type of research that
was going to be done or if they truly had a child that would benefit from the
research than more parents would consent to their child participating in the
research.
In this article they also talked about children participating in
a clinical asthma research in the United States. The parents in this study identified the most
important factors in favor of parental consent were learning more about the disease,
helping medical knowledge, trials using new drugs, relationships with staff,
financial benefits, free medication, encouragement by physician and free visits
(Nasef, et al, 2014). In contrast to the
study in Egypt the use of new drugs or vaccines and research using invasive
procedure were the main reasons for refusal by parents. I thought it was interesting to see the
differences and similarities in the two countries regarding what was important
to the parents.
Reference
Nasef, N., Shabaan, A., Mohammed, S., Kandel, S., Settin,
A., Zedan, M., & Fouda, A. (2014). Factors influencing parental consent for
participation in clinical research involving their children in Egypt. Eastern
Mediterranean Health Journal, 20(3), 162-168.
Hi Courtney,
ReplyDeleteI found your topic very interesting as well. I'm not a parent, but I have plenty nieces and nephews that I would need to know all the details before I could give my consent for them to partake in any research study. The families for Egypt, I'm proud of them for standing up and expressing their views, beliefs, and values at to why they didn't want their child to be part of the research taking place on a certain topic. Though I think its important for all families to have all the information regarding the research study the researchers want the children to be participants in. Without this knowledge the parents fear the words can happen to their children and they want to avoid that at all cost. That is why a parents consent and the child's consent is so important in any researchers research on a topic that they want to fight for; to benefit the children.
References
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services: Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP). (n.d.) Special protections for children as research subjects. HHS.gov. Retrieved on from http://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/policy/populations/children.html.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services: Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP). (n.d.). Research with children—FAQs. HHS.gov. Retrieved from http://answers.hhs.gov/ohrp/categories/1570.
I think it would depend on what type of research it was. I would think a preferred choice for parents would be observing their children in the classroom and perhaps the parents or teachers being asked questions. Some parents might be okay with their child being asked certain questions if the research is fun for their children. I have seen studies were children are asked about what toy they prefer or they are observed during play. I like Erin am not a parent but if I were I would want to know they ends and outs in detail of the study and I might even want to be present during the study.
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