[Air-L] consent form for email exchanges

[Janet Salmons, Ph.D.]

Elena,

I would suggest that the content of your consent agreement, as well as its
content, need to be re-thought for online interviews using email.

Remember, consent agreements communicate to participants what they can
expect from you, the researcher, and should inspire their trust in the
safety and credibility of the study. For one thing, I would think it
important to assure your participants of the privacy of your exchanges
given the ease of forwarding email. Also, depending on the kind of program
you are using, the email exchange may be stored on someone else's server,
in the cloud. So I would think you would want to specify some practices
such as saving the email to your hard drive and deleting the message on the
server.

Additionally-- is it possible that other information about the participant
might be evident from the email service, such as in a profile, signature,
links. Might that participant have a Twitter/Facebook/site/blog linked to
the email?  Do you want the ability to use any of the data the participant
may have posted? If so you may want to acknowledge it in the consent letter.

I've created some materials about informed consent, as well as a Survey
Monkey form a participant can fill out and return (you can use/adapt the
questions if they fit your study). You can find them here:
http://bit.ly/rHxVNn. I discuss consent and other ethical issues in depth
in *Online Interviews in Real Time*, and one case uses email
interviews in *Cases
in Online Interview Research* (both from Sage.)

I agree with Robert-- your IRB may have particular guidelines on email
interviews. However, I have not encountered a case where IRBs allowed data
to be collected from an interview without a separate consent letter, as he
indicated. In some of these areas there are not standard procedures used
everywhere and you have to decide. If you want to publish findings you may
want to err on the more conservative side and obtain consent.

As well, there are other rules about use of digital signatures-- in the US
some states do not honor them. In that case you'll need to have a way to
obtain an original signature.

Finally, I have another question for you: if you have some exchanges that
are in-person, synchronous and verbal, and some that are written and
asynchronous, the data you collect will be quite different. How will you
account for this difference in your research design, and in your analysis?
Have you considered conducting the online interviews using
videoconferencing or Skype, which would be more comparable to an in-person
in that you can see the participant, the participant has to reply in the
moment, you get the non-verbals in terms of emotion and timing, facial
expressions etc.

Hope this is helpful and all the best for a successful study.
Janet

Janet Salmons, PhD
*Capella University School of Business and Technology and Vision2Lead, Inc.
*Site- http://www.vision2lead.com
Follow Twitter at #einterview
Now available: Cases in Online Interview
Research<http://www.sagepub.com/books/Book235442>
PO Box 943
Boulder, CO 80306-0943
jsalmons at vision2lead.com


> Date: Tue, 10 Jan 2012 14:11:19 -0500
> From: Elena Razlogova <elena.razlogova at gmail.com>
> To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org
> Subject: [Air-L] consent form for email exchanges
> Message-ID: <D339760A-27D4-4315-9A70-71E063C8E88A at gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
>
> Dear list members,
>
> What are the rules and practices on filling out consent forms for
> interviews that are done online or over email?
>
> Most of the interviews I'm doing for my research will be conducted
> in-person, with a standard consent form to sign. However, some of my
> interviewees may be more comfortable with an email exchange rather than a
> personal interview. In that case, instead of sending them the form to sign,
> scan, and email me back, I would like to include the consent form in the
> email together with my questions, for them to fill out and return by
> hitting reply, but without the signature.
>
> Is that an accepted practice? What are the rules on this?
>
> Thank  you,
> Elena
>
> Elena Razlogova
> Concordia University, Montreal
> http://elenarazlogova.org
>
> ------------------------------
>
> Message: 4
> Date: Tue, 10 Jan 2012 13:18:26 -0600
> From: "Peaslee, Robert" <robert.peaslee at ttu.edu>
> To: Elena Razlogova <elena.razlogova at gmail.com>,
>        "air-l at listserv.aoir.org"       <air-l at listserv.aoir.org>
> Subject: Re: [Air-L] consent form for email exchanges
> Message-ID: <CB31EA29.6B5F%robert.peaslee at ttu.edu>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
>
> My guess is that there will be some variability on this based on the
> predilections of your institutional review board. My practice up to now
> has been your former option in order to keep the consent form separate
> from the data. But lately my IRB has been eschewing consent forms
> altogether for exempt research (research that poses no reasonable risk) in
> order to further minimize the possibilities for identification of subjects.
>
> I'd check with your IRB coordinator and get some feedback there, since
> you'll probably get a variety of answers here.
>
> Best,
> Rob
>
> Robert Moses Peaslee, Ph.D.
>
> Assistant Professor, Dept of Electronic Media & Communication
> College of Mass Communications
> Texas Tech University
>
> robert.peaslee at ttu.edu
> 806 742 6500, x283
>
>
>