Consent is at the heart of best practice research. There is a cloudy history of consent practices (or lack thereof) relevant to our profession, with deviations and indeed violations notable across human research, environmental research and conservation based research. In a united commitment to ensuring that best practice models of informed consent, compliant with national and international legislation, are at the fore of our operations – a number of key models have been developed and implemented into daily practice. These range from opt in, to opt out, delayed consent, broad consent and waivers of consent. If we as a profession share a commitment to be best practice models of consent, are we splitting hairs by developing models directly related to individual research projects or should we be striving for a single, best practice, model of consent?
To the question of informed consent – does one model fit all?