Parental Consent
What are the current views in Australia about obtaining active or passive parental consent for children’s participation in health and medical research?
There is ongoing debate among researchers about how to include children and young people as participants in relevant health and medical research projects. An important aspect of the debate is the choice between obtaining active or passive consent from parents.
To obtain active parental consent, researchers must ask parents to complete and return a form agreeing to their child’s participation (opt-in consent). To obtain passive parental consent, researchers must ask parents to complete and return a form only if they do not want their child to take part (opt-out consent).
This research project will explore the research ethics climate in Australia regarding parental consent for children’s participation in research and will also collect information about projects using passive parental consent that have been given ethics approval.
A Cochrane Systematic Review is underway to explore how both passive and active parental consent have been used in research involving children, and to analyse associated implications for the findings from research with children.
Read more detailed information about this project
Partners for Parental Consent |
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| Centre for Adolescent Health |  |
The McCaughey Centre |
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| View all partners of the PRC | ||
