Waiving Parental Consent: An Alternative Strategy for Protecting LGBTQ Youth in Nursing Research

Purpose: Securing parental consent is standard practice when conducting nursing research with adolescents. However, in sexuality research with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or questioning (LGBT) youth, many may have yet to disclose their sexual orientation due to uncertainty with parental reactions or may not feel comfortable asking parents’ permission to participate in studies about sensitive topics such as sex. This challenge in soliciting the input of an understudied population does not allow for the examination of the factors that affect LGBTQ adolescents’ sexual health. Obtaining waivers of parental consent is an underused strategy that allows for the engagement of LGBTQ youth in studies about their emergent sexual health needs. This report will detail our experience in securing a waiver of parental consent in the recruitment of 15 to 17 year old gay, bisexual and questioning adolescent males. Using an exemplar study, we will detail the strategies used to address the Institutional Review Board’s (IRB) anticipated concerns, explain responses to stipulations required for our study and enumerate study design features that future researchers can incorporate in their proposals that will increase the opportunity for LGBTQ minors to participate in nursing research.

Methods: The IRB application included arguments about how excluding LGBTQ youth from research violates the principles of beneficence, justice and respect for persons, how LGBTQ youth are autonomous and capable of providing informed consent similar to their heterosexual peers, how studies that waived parental consent have been successfully conducted in peer institutions, and how research findings produced significant and rich results. Other elements included in the waiver request was a list of studies that effectively recruited underage LGBTQ youth, institutional support letters from bioethicists and child advocacy experts, and anticipated human subjects protection concerns and how they would be addressed.

Results: The waiver of parental consent was granted by the full IRB after months of deliberation.

Conclusion: To properly safeguard LGBTQ youth and to encourage nursing research informed by this population’s current social milieu, waivers of parental consent may be necessary. These waivers are in accord with key ethical research principles and can be a crucial methodological feature that will assuage this population’s concerns about participating in research about them.