An Experimental Test of Medical Disclosure and Consent Documentation: Assessing Patient Comprehension,Self-Efficacy,and Uncertainty

Effectively conveying risks and hazards in medical disclosure and informed consent documentation is a crucial type of communication. However, existing protocols typically do not meet the needs of patients or practitioners. In the present study, we advance a reconceptualization of obtaining written informed consent by analyzing it as a process of uncertainty management rather than a matter of document readability and recall. Results of this randomized trial indicated that patients who reviewed a simplified consent document reported greater comprehension of medico-legal terminology and lower uncertainty about the document, although they did not evince greater self-efficacy. Health literacy was a significant moderator of the relationship between consent form version and comprehension.     

Informed Consent in the Study of On-Line Communities: A Reflection on the Effects of Computer-Mediated Social Research

In studying on-line communities, researchers must consider the unique environmental factors involved in order to minimize potential harm to human subjects. In particular, the often commented upon disinhibiting effect of computer-mediated communication can encourage people to agree to or even insist on a kind of public exposure by which they may eventually be harmed. On the Internet, where perceptions of interpersonal affect and effects may be obscured by the nature of the medium itself, care must be taken to guard against not only any increased tendency for researchers to objectify subjects, but also the tendency for subjects to underestimate the potential consequences of consent. The criteria for informed consent that may be sufficient in face-toface research environments are not necessarily so in a medium in which subjective experience is easily objectified and information is easily devalued.     

Ethics and paediatric exercise science: Issues and making a submission to a local ethics and research committee

Research with children presents issues beyond those normally encountered in adult exercise science research. This paper explores the specific ethical issues that are encountered when conducting paediatric research in the exercise sciences. We identify the historical, moral and philosophical underpinnings of ethical conduct. The issue of consent and children's ability to provide informed consent is discussed, as is the nature of therapeutic and non-therapeutic research. Finally, we examine the information that is required by a local ethics and research committee and provide guidance material to help in the formulation of an application to such a committee.     

Crush: mapping historical,material and affective force relations in young children's hetero-sexual playground play

ABSTRACT

Drawing on ethnographic multi-modal data of the gendered and sexual dynamics of pre-school play (age 6) in a rapidly declining fishing and farming community in North Finland, this paper offers a glimpse into our sense-making of a short video-recorded episode in which three boys repeatedly pile up on and demand a kiss from one of their girl classmates. Our analyses resonate with a wider community of feminist and queer scholars who are bringing affective methodologies and posthuman approaches to re-invigorate how we might understand the complexities of gender and sexual power relations in the early years. Inspired by the writings of Guattari and his concept of ‘existential refrains’, we create three ‘crush’ assemblages to map the more-than-human territorialising and de-territorialising force relations at play. Each assemblage offers a thinking Otherwise about gender, sexuality, violence and consent in which place, space, objects, affect and history entangle in predictable and unpredictable ways.     

Health on the Line: Identity and Disciplinary Control in Employee Occupational Health and Safety Discourse

Based on an ethnographic case study and interviewing at an automobile manufacturing plant, this essay examines employee consent to health hazards and to the discursive and regulatory mechanisms that exclude employee experiences from official reports of workplace injury and illness. The article redresses the lack of scholarly attention in the occupational health and safety literature to the role of discourse in defining and negotiating risk and in constructing norms about reporting health and safety issues among employees. Findings demonstrate how employees themselves may participate in the construction of shared identity norms that act disciplinarily to shift responsibility for safety from management to individual workers. Understanding these hegemonic norms provides a basis to question occupational health and safety statistics, and offers strategic points of intervention to improve worker health protections.     

Informed Consent in the Study of On-Line Communities: A Reflection on the Effects of Computer-Mediated Social Research

In studying on-line communities, researchers must consider the unique environmental factors involved in order to minimize potential harm to human subjects. In particular, the often commented upon disinhibiting effect of computer-mediated communication can encourage people to agree to or even insist on a kind of public exposure by which they may eventually be harmed. On the Internet, where perceptions of interpersonal affect and effects may be obscured by the nature of the medium itself, care must be taken to guard against not only any increased tendency for researchers to objectify subjects, but also the tendency for subjects to underestimate the potential consequences of consent. The criteria for informed consent that may be sufficient in face-toface research environments are not necessarily so in a medium in which subjective experience is easily objectified and information is easily devalued.     

Health on the Line: Identity and Disciplinary Control in Employee Occupational Health and Safety Discourse

Based on an ethnographic case study and interviewing at an automobile manufacturing plant, this essay examines employee consent to health hazards and to the discursive and regulatory mechanisms that exclude employee experiences from official reports of workplace injury and illness. The article redresses the lack of scholarly attention in the occupational health and safety literature to the role of discourse in defining and negotiating risk and in constructing norms about reporting health and safety issues among employees. Findings demonstrate how employees themselves may participate in the construction of shared identity norms that act disciplinarily to shift responsibility for safety from management to individual workers. Understanding these hegemonic norms provides a basis to question occupational health and safety statistics, and offers strategic points of intervention to improve worker health protections.     

同意的难题——论作为政治合法性来源的同意

自西方启蒙时期开始,政治理论家们便将同意作为政治合法性的基础,从古典社会契约论者霍布斯、洛克、卢梭的理论中,我们可以清晰地看到在前国家的自然状态中,人们是通过同意授权统治者,赋予其进行统治的权利,使其对政治权力的行使具有了合法性。但是同意理论本身也面临着一系列难题,譬如洛克《政府论》中的默认同意难题;再如在当代社会,面对大而复杂的共同体,古典社会契约论中的同意虽然在证成国家建立的合法性中具有吸引力,但是难以满足对于后续国家政治合法性的实际论证,于是发展出崭新的同意概念,即将民主程序中的投票或参与等同于同意。本文要论证的就是这些新的尝试都是不成功的,政治合法性的来源最终从同意转向了公共理由。     

Sexual Consent as a Scientific Subject: A Literature Review

Despite the presumed centrality of sexual consent to definitions of sexual violence, it remains an ambiguous and often unexamined concept both in lay and professional/scientific discourses. The following literature review of peer-reviewed research studying sexual consent as a scientific object will thematically present major findings from said research and discuss the applications of these findings for educational measures. A reading of existing research in the social sciences on the topic demonstrates the incongruence of many definitions and representations of consent that are used both by researchers and educators alike with the everyday experiences of young people.