Characteristics of responding-, nonresponding- and refusing-parents in an adolescent lifestyle choice study

The acquisition of a random sample is one of the many methodological problems that arise when conducting research with adolescent populations. Frequently, due to ethical considerations associated with collecting data from adolescents, active parental consent procedures are required. The current study examined characteristics of parents who consented, refused consent, or did not respond to an active consent request for their children to participate in a large-scale study of adolescent lifestyle behaviors. Results indicated nonresponding-parents were more likely to be employed than consenting-parents. Further, differences were found for a number of attitudinal variables and about the importance of adolescent research. There were significant differences between refusing-parents, and consenting- and nonresponding-parents who were similar in their attitudes toward adolescent research. The findings suggest that nonresponding-parents are characteristically more similar to consenting-parents than to refusing-parents, which supports the use of passive consent procedures as a reasonable alternative to requiring active parental consent in adolescent research.