Polarity of Public Perception over General Consent : Survey on Consciousness of Healthy Japanese Participants in Brain Database Projects

Researches based on clinical big data and Researches using bio-bank are recently increasing. In this study we discuss the issues involving general consent through a quantitative analysis of a national random sample survey in Japan. Among the 3,295 respondents, 42% of respondents agreed to general consent in some form. On the other hand, 58% of respondents preferred “tiered consent,” or “specific consent.” We interpreted this result as polarity of public perception over general consent. Referring to logistic regression analysis, the likelihood of preferring general consent increased with age (p<0.05), and “benefit of participating in research” was positively correlated, and “anxiety about participating in research” and “mindset that brain imaging is special” negatively correlated to the affirmative view of general consent (p<0.001).

Open Access Journal