Ethical and legal consent are related but different. In many countries in which research is conducted, both ethical and legal consent should be attained. However, while legislation varies from country to country, ethical principles and norms provide that informed consent should be obtained in all cases.

This chart from the European Agency for Fundamental Rights (https://fra.europa.eu/en/publication/2019/child-participation-research), provides an overview of the various ages at which children living in different European countries can legally provide consent to participate in research. It shows a significant variation between countries. It also shows that in some countries, there is no clear regulation about when parental consent is required or about the age at which this requirement might cease. It provides a table outlining the various contexts in which legal consent is required and also lists various legislative instruments that regulate this requirement in each country.

In spite of these legal frameworks and requirements, ethical informed consent should always be sought when involving children and young people in research. Children and young people should always be supported in making their own decisions about whether or not they want to participate in a research project. As outlined above, sufficient, age-appropriate and clear information should be provided about what the research involves.

Furthermore, it is not always clear how researchers can obtain the ethical informed consent of children and young people. In some instances, for example, researchers need to secure the informed consent of both children and young people and of their parents or guardians before children can be involved in the research process. In certain countries and legal jurisdictions, parents have the right to decide whether or not their children can participate in research, regardless of their child’s willingness or consent. This often relates to a historical belief that children and young people lacked the competence to make informed decisions about their own involvement in research. In other countries, children of a certain age (for example, 14 or 15) have the right to provide consent on their own behalf. However, the reliance on children’s age as an indicator of their competence to make decisions on their own behalf is disputed. Researchers, therefore, need to critically reflect on how they can support children and young people to make informed decisions about whether or not to participate in research.

Researchers must always respect and understand both the legal and ethical requirements that pertain to securing informed consent in the jurisdiction(s) in which they operate. This is particularly important because parents or guardians may refuse to allow their children to participate in research, complicating the extent to which children can be encouraged to voice their opinions on matters that concern them.

Consent and assent are concepts that usually refer to a legal differentiation between the extent to which a person, for example a research participant, can fully understand and make their own decisions about participation in research. In the case of consent, individuals understand that research participation is voluntary and that they can withdraw their consent at any time. This consent is also documented, usually in a signed consent form.

As consent in some legal jurisdictions can only be provided by people who have achieved a certain age, for example 13 or 14 in some European countries, or 18 in the USA, researchers can also legally seek assent from research participants. In this case, individuals who are not able to provide legal consent, can assent to participating in research. In legal context where the possibility of obtaining assent is provided for, researchers are also required to seek the legal consent of the parent or guardian of the individual who assents to research participation.

In some cases, assent is also used to refer to a situation where children and young people participating in research do not formally ‘opt-out’ of research participation, for example in a classroom context where all students are required to participate in a research project. However, this kind of situation raises ethical problems because all research participants should ethically provide informed consent in advance of participating in a research project. This consent should be informed, explicit, voluntary and documented and can be withdrawn at any time.

Please share your question with us via the "Share your feedback & input!" button in the bottom right corner.