Encouraging greater empowerment for adolescents in consent procedures in social science research and policy projects

Oddrun Samdal, Isabelle Budin-Ljøsne, Ellen Haug, Trond Helland, Lina Kjostarova-Unkovska, Claire Bouillon, Christian Bröer, Maria Corell, Alina Cosma, Dorothy Currie, Charli Eriksson, Rosemarie Felder-Puig, Tania Gaspar, Curt Hagquist, Janetta Harbron, Atle Jåstad, Colette Kelly, Cecile Knai, Dorota Kleszczewska, Bjarte Birkeland KysnesNanna Lien, Aleksandra Luszczynska, Gerben Moerman, Concepcion Moreno-Maldonado, Saoirse NicGabhainn, Iveta Pudule, Jelena Gudelj Rakic, Ana Rito, Alfred Mestad Rønnestad, Madeleine Ulstein, Harry Rutter, Knut-Inge Klepp

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Abstract

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child emphasizes the importance of allowing children and adolescents to influence decisions that are important to them following their age and maturity. This paper explores the principles, practices, and implications around using parental versus child/adolescent consent when participating in social science research and policy development. Experiences from two studies are presented: The Confronting Obesity: Co-creating policy with youth (CO-CREATE) and the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study, a World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborative Cross-National study. Although parental consent may be an important gatekeeper for protecting children and adolescents from potentially harmful research participation, it may also be considered an obstacle to the empowerment of children and adolescents in case they want to share their views and experiences directly. This paper argues that evaluation of possible harm should be left to ethics committees and that, if no harm related to the research participation processes is identified and the project has a clear perspective on collaborating with the target group, adolescents from the age of 12?years should be granted the legal capacity to give consent to participate in the research project. Collaboration with adolescents in the development of the research project is encouraged.
Original languageEnglish
Article numbere13636
Number of pages11
JournalObesity Reviews
Volume24
Issue numberS2
Early online date27 Sept 2023
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 30 Sept 2023

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
We acknowledge and thank all the young people who participated in this study. The CO‐CREATE project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 774210. The content of this paper reflects only the authors' views, and the European Commission is not liable for any use that may be made of the information it contains. HBSC is an international study performed in collaboration with the World Health Organization/Europe, WHO/EURO. The authors acknowledge the International Coordinator of the study, Joanna Inchley, and her team from the University of Glasgow, Scotland, and the International Data Centre Manager, Oddrun Samdal, and her team at the University of Bergen, Norway.

Funding Information:
We acknowledge and thank all the young people who participated in this study. The CO-CREATE project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 774210. The content of this paper reflects only the authors' views, and the European Commission is not liable for any use that may be made of the information it contains. HBSC is an international study performed in collaboration with the World Health Organization/Europe, WHO/EURO. The authors acknowledge the International Coordinator of the study, Joanna Inchley, and her team from the University of Glasgow, Scotland, and the International Data Centre Manager, Oddrun Samdal, and her team at the University of Bergen, Norway.

Keywords

  • adolescent consent
  • CO-CREATE study
  • HBSC study
  • parental consent

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