The purpose of the present study was to investigate whether altering an informed consent document (ICD), in ways that either promote or inhibit accessibility, would affect potential participants’ willingness to participate in a child development laboratory-based study. Specifically, I was interested in assessing the willingness to participate of historically underrepresented groups, especially Appalachian caregiver-child dyads. I altered three parameters of a previously approved and employed ICD to explore whether these parameters impacted Appalachian caregivers’ comprehension of the study, willingness to participate, and trust in the researchers. The manipulated parameters included reading level, utilization of illustrative pictures, and inclusion of text-to-speech audio conversions. I utilized a 2x2x2 fully between-subjects factorial design to assess the main and interaction effects of manipulating the ICD reading level, the presence or absence of pictures on the ICD, and the incorporation or non-incorporation of text-to-speech on participants’ comprehension, willingness to participate, and trust in the researcher. One-hundred and twenty-two participants responded to the online survey. After filtering the responses for participants that met inclusion criteria, the sample included 18 primarily White Appalachian caregivers. I conducted a series of independent samples t-tests to evaluate the main effects of the three parameters of accessibility on participant comprehension, willingness to participate, and trust in researchers. The present study revealed one significant effect of reading level on trust in researchers. All other effects were nonsignificant. An investigation of this kind provides new information concerning informed consent design. Future research should further investigate the influence of accessibility in informed consent, namely with larger sample sizes.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ETSU/oai:dc.etsu.edu:etd-5973 |
| Date | 01 August 2024 |
| Creators | Simpson, Tess A |
| Publisher | Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University |
| Source Sets | East Tennessee State University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | Electronic Theses and Dissertations |
| Rights | Copyright by the authors. |
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