At the Movez Lab, we mainly do research on and with young people. Because most of the research we do focuses on young people under 16, we need parental consent. It is important to us that the consent procedure matches parents' wishes. We have therefore conducted research into parents' views on giving consent for their child's participation in research.

Different ways of giving consent

Giving consent can be done in different ways, parents can actively register their child or children participate automatically unless they are opted out. We are curious about parents' preferences and whether it matters to parents (when giving consent) what kind of research their child participates in.

We therefore presented parents of primary and secondary school pupils with different scenarios of different types of research their child could participate in. They could then indicate what kind of consent method they want to give, sign up or opt out of different types of research. 

Parents' wishes showed that for most of the types of studies, they would prefer to sign up their child. However, there are exceptions to this among parents of secondary school students. They have a preference for opting out their child for observation studies, co-creation sessions and questionnaires. This knowledge can be used to better tailor the consent procedure to parents' preferences.