Informed Consent Form or Information Sheet Specific to Your Application

Before creating a consent or information sheet, complete the exempt review decision charts to ascertain if your study is exempt or not.

Informed Consent

  • The La Verne IRB requires the use of our templates of informed consents. 
  • If you are a master’s or doctoral student, be sure that the introduction identifies the project as a “master’s research study” or “dissertation research study.”
  • If you are proposing to use an electronic survey (e.g. in Qualtrics), the informed consent can be included as an electronic document before the survey. A question should be set up asking participants if they agree to the terms of the consent. This question should have only two responses: “I agree” or “I disagree.” The question should also be set so that participants cannot continue unless they have agreed to the terms. Those participants that click “I disagree” can be led to a page that thanks them.
  • If you are conducting interviews, be sure to write whether/how the interviews will be recorded (audio or visual) and procedures for ensuring confidentiality with those recordings. For example, the recordings can be destroyed after being transcribed and the transcripts can be shredded at the conclusion of the study.
  • The application and consent must reflect the La Verne IRB policy of maintaining study documentation for 3 years following study completion. Any signed consent forms will need to be retained for 3 years after the conclusion of your study. Forms that are not signed are considered information sheets and do not need to be archived, although one copy should be saved for your records for 3 years.
  • For studies not including minors (participants will be over the age of 18 years), please confirm in the informed consent that your participants are over the age of 18 years. This can be accomplished by including a statement near the end of the informed consent where participants agree to participate; they can also agree to being 18 years or older.

Information Sheet

  • Information sheets are documents that can be used in exempt research only. They are usually half a page in length and include the following information:
    1. Study Purpose
    2. Procedures
    3. Risk
    4. Name of PI and contact information (including Chair if a graduate student) including phone numbers
    5. Statement about the research being voluntary
    6. IRB Office information (IRB Office, 909-448-4564, irb@laverne.edu, University of La Verne, Institutional Review Board, 1950 Third Street, CAFE 112, La Verne, CA  91750)
  • An information sheet template is available on our Consent, Assent, and Information Sheet Templates webpage.