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Consent Process for Research Surveys

How to I get consent from participants when disseminating an online survey?

If your project involves collecting data using an online survey, you'll likely be developing your survey using your Roanoke College-provided license to Qualtrics. If that's the case, you should follow the steps below to create an Information Sheet (instead of an Informed Consent Document) on the first page of your survey:

  1. The first “Block” of your Qualtrics survey should include a single “question” of the type “Text / Graphic”
  2. Here you should provide the text of your Information Sheet
  3. Then you should select “Add Block” and start building your survey from there - this ensures that your Information Sheet stands alone on its own page
  4. Once you have a second block, click on the first block
  5. On the right-hand side, under “Edit block” and “Format”, click “Next/Previous button text”
  6. For the “Next Button Text”, type in “I provide my consent to participate in this study.”
  7. At the bottom of the informed consent information, the last thing you should be sure to include is text stating something along the lines of “By clicking the "I provide my consent to participate in this study" button below, you're providing your consent to participate in this survey. If you do not consent to participate, simply close this browser.”

For guidance on creating the text for your Information Sheet, please visit the "Forms, Templates, Samples, and Other Resources" webpage.