informed consent

a person’s voluntary agreement to participate in a procedure on the basis of his or her understanding of its nature, its potential benefits and possible risks, and available alternatives. Informed consent is a fundamental requirement of research with humans and typically involves having participants sign documents, prior to the start of a study, that describe specifically what their involvement would entail and noting that they are free to decline participation or to withdraw from the research at any time. In therapeutic contexts, the principle of informed consent has provided a foundation for do not resuscitate (DNR) orders and other advance directives and for the natural-death acts that have been passed into law throughout the United States. See also institutional review board.

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Psychology term of the day

February 11th 2025

Q sort

a data-collection procedure, often used in personality measurement, in which a participant or independent rater sorts a broad set of stimuli into categories using a specific instruction set. The stimuli are often short descriptive statements (e.g., of personal traits) printed on cards. Examples of the instruction set are “describe yourself,” “describe this child,” and “describe your friend.” In the classic or structured Q sort, raters are constrained to use a predetermined number of stimuli in each category. Often, general categories are used to reflect the normal distribution, with raters assigning fewer stimuli to the extreme categories and many more stimuli to the middle categories. See Q methodology.