Examining the language demands of informed consent documents in patient recruitment to cancer trials using tools from corpus and computational linguistics.

ABSTRACT: Obtaining informed consent (IC) is an ethical imperative, signifying participants' understanding of the conditions and implications of research participation. One setting where the stakes for understanding are high is randomized controlled trials (RCTs), which test the effectiveness and safety of medical interventions. However, the use of legalese and medicalese in ethical forms coupled with the need to explain RCT-related concepts (e.g. randomization) can increase patients' cognitive load when reading text. There is a need to systematically examine the language demands of IC documents, including whether the processes intended to safeguard patients by providing clear information might do the opposite through complex, inaccessible language. Therefore, the goal of this study is to build an o

SUBMITTER: Isaacs T 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9163777 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature