[Air-l] electronic signatures

[Mark D. Johns]

Alex Halavais wrote:
> This document suggests electronic signatures may not be acceptable for
> Internet work:
> 
> http://www.utexas.edu/research/rsc/humanresearch/special_topics/ehtical_dilemmas_internet.pdf
> 
> It reads, in part: 
> 
> """
> The federal regulations require signed informed consent from
> every research participant unless a waiver of signature is
> granted by the IRB, or the research is exempt from federal
> oversight. The Office of Human Research Protection (OHRP),
> the governmental oversight agency for human subject
> protection, has deemed electronic signatures obtained over the
> Internet to be invalid even though electronic signatures are
> accepted for interstate commerce. Researchers currently
> getting electronic signatures do not meet the federal regulatory
> requirement. Thus, the investigator must, in most cases,
> receive an original or faxed signature from the research
> participant.
> """
> 
> For what it's worth... I haven't dug into whether this is the standard
> employed on my own campus.
> 
> Alex
> 
> 

Thanks for sharing this document, which raises some good issues. 
However, it represents a pretty narrow interpretation of the law, 
especially in view of the fact that the government itself uses 
electronic signatures quite extensively these days. You can even sign 
your tax return electronically! This document assumes a rather high 
degree of risk to the human subjects, and in reality, there is (or ought 
to be) a lot more room for negotiation of these matters with the IRB 
depending on the nature of the study.
-- 
Mark D. Johns, Ph.D.
Asst. Professor of Communication/Linguistics
Luther College, Decorah, Iowa
http://faculty.luther.edu/~johnsmar/
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"Get the facts first. You can distort them later."
     ---Mark Twain