More than 85% of those with tertiary education would prefer consent to be obtained by the doctor who will carry out the procedure as against 33.8% of those with no formal education.
Groups who were significantly more likely to prefer consent every time compared with consent once for life were: under 55 years (70.3% vs 60.9%; χ²=5.88(1), p=0.015); had no knowledge of the research process (72.3% vs 63.4%; χ²=5.77(1), p=0.016) or were either not at all or moderately religious (70.2% vs 51.3%; χ²=5.1(1), p=0.024).
Our findings are similar to the Abou Zeid study in Egypt where 44.3% of the 600 participants surveyed preferred consent options regarding storage and 39% of this subsection desired the consent option for future research to be restricted to the illness under study.
When entered into the regression analysis, the strongest significant predictor for preferring consent every time was being not at all or moderately religious (OR=2.04; 95% CI 1.05 to 4.00, p=0.036) followed by being under 55 years (OR=1.60; 95% CI 1.07 to 2.41, p=0.023; table 3).
In total, these results are similar to findings from our study and indicate that while the majority of participants are comfortable with a one-time consent, many prefer tiered consent or re-consent approaches indicating a desire for control.
Those people who preferred opt-in consent were also more likely to prefer specific consent models (71.1% vs 35.3%, χ²=91.72(1), p<0.001).
We also looked at who was most likely to prefer generic consent, the least restrictive of the proposed consent models.
Using the boost sample we found that 'Black' participants were significantly more likely to prefer specific consent models compared with 'White' participants (75.6% vs 58%, χ²=4.31(1), p=0.038).
Focus group participants affected by an illness or disability were also found to prefer generic consent, and is likely to reflect the fact that they have greater interests at stake.
Notably, where participants had some or good knowledge of the research process and where there was in-depth discussion (ie, during focus groups), participants were more likely to prefer generic consent, a finding that has also been identified elsewhere in the literature 37 and supports the need for information and education if increasing the acceptability of generic consent is deemed desirable.
A few doctors, however, preferred oral consent over signing the informed consent form, in order to avoid personal identification.
