[Air-l] consent for asynchronous qualitative email interviews with international participants

[C Cook or A McDonald]

I am a PhD candidate and I am preparing for my ethics application to conduct
interviews by email in the area of women's sexual health (ie 'sensitive'
topic). From the literature there seem to be a variety of acceptable options
with regard to consent, from tacit agreement inherent in the decision to
participate through to a variety of procedures to obtain some form of
consent documentation. As I am interviewing an international rather than
local group of participants, obtaining a hard copy by post or fax is
problematic in terms of reimbursement of participants and in terms of
dissuading people from this extra step in participation. I would be very
appreciative if anyone could update me on practices that are currently
deemed acceptable. The main text I am working from in terms of ethics is
Mann & Stewart 2000 'Internet communication and qualitative research: A
handbook for researching online.'

Kind regards,

Catherine Cook