Voluntary Consent in Correctional Settings: Do Offenders Feel Coerced to Participate in Research?

Abstract

A major ethical concern in research with criminal offenders is the potential for abuse due to coercive influences that may adversely affect offenders' capacity to give voluntary consent to participate in research conducted in correctional settings. Despite this concern, to date there have been almost no systematic scientific investigations of the extent to which offenders themselves perceive that coercion occurs in these settings or that it is likely to influence their decisions about research participation. In a sample of over 600 ethnically diverse men and women recruited from various prisons and community corrections facilities in Texas and Florida, we used a vignette-based survey concerning a hypothetical research project to measure and compare offenders' global perceptions of coercive processes, as well as the differential salience and perceived coercive influence of specific factors (e.g., coercion by other inmates, inducements from staff). Somewhat surprisingly, across multiple outcome measures our participants on average reported relatively little in the way of significant coercive influences on their capacity to make voluntary decisions concerning research participation. Implications and directions for future research on coercive influences in offender research are discussed.

Do the Psychopathic Personality Traits of Fearless Dominance and Self‐Centered Impulsivity Predict Attitudes about and Influences on Research Participation?

“…Further, those who either failed to complete the MPQ or whose MPQ was deemed invalid (n = 5) were excluded from these analyses, resulting in a total sample of 631 for the present study. (The total sample differs from that reported by Edens et al [2011], due to a few participants being excluded from their sample based on analyses unrelated to the present study.) Participants were prison inmates (n = 346) and offenders under community corrections supervision (n = 285) who were, on average, 34.38 years of age (SD = 10.34) at administration of the survey, with an overall range from 18 to 77 years.…”

“…European Americans comprised 42.20% of the sample (n = 266), followed by African Americans at 28.80% (n = 182) and Hispanics at 29.00% (n = 183). Please see Edens et al (2011) for a more detailed description of the sample and data collection procedures.…”

“…These six deviation scores reflected impact on voluntariness, with positive scores indicating no perceived pressure and negative scores reflecting pressure to comply with the source of illicit pressure. Edens et al (2011) and Magyar et al (2012) examined each of the items individually in order to fully investigate the impact each separate illicit pressure might have on participants. In the present study, however, exploratory factor analysis 2 of the items indicated that they appeared to be tapping a general underlying dimension, and therefore, a single summary variable created from the average of the six items was used to reduce the total number of variables included in our analyses.…”

Randomisation before consent: avoiding delay to time-critical intervention and ensuring informed consent

“…Wider research highlights other groups who may feel coerced to give consent including offenders and participants in institutions such as care homes, educational or workplace settings where potential participants may feel obliged to consent to participate in order to conform with peers or service provider expectations (Cook & Inglis, 2012;Edens et al, 2011;Goodman et al, 2011;Loyd, 2013). Potential participants, even when they understand study information, may ascribe additional meaning to their participation, or be motivated by a range of drivers not readily apparent to the researcher.…”

“…In the context of research, this places a responsibility on investigators to provide potential participants full and accurate information and to ensure that their study processes promote individual participants' understanding and ability to choose freely (Behrendt, Gölz, Roesler, Bertz, & Wünsch, 2011). Researchers must take extra care when potential participants are subjected to compulsion in other aspects of their lives (Edens, Epstein, Stiles, & Poythress, 2011;Wolbransky, Goldstein, Giallella, & Heilbrun, 2013).…”