Providing information for participants
The way in which you provide information depends on who will take part in your research. You can provide information about your research in a number of ways, through spoken explanations, with a DVD, or in writing (whether on paper or in a web page).
The usual approach is to provide an information leaflet, and ethics committees will often expect you to do this (and want to know why you are not, if you don’t). Ethics committees sometimes prefer information leaflets (or require them) because they can check that a leaflet includes all the information that a potential participant might need to ensure valid consent – it is harder for a committee to do that checking if information is only provided verbally.
