Akhter, Sadika
Kumkum, Feroza Akhter
Bashar, Farzana
Rahman, Aminur
Article History
Received: 16 April 2021
Accepted: 16 November 2021
First Online: 5 December 2021
Declarations
:
: All methods of the study were conducted in accordance with the authors’ institutional guidelines for ethical conduct of research. The study proposal (PR-18102) was reviewed and approved by the Ethical Review Committee (ERC) of International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research, Bangladesh (icddr, b). The data collection was conducted during the period of lock-down when mobility was restricted. All interviews were conducted over phone. According to the regulation of the Ethical Review Committee of icddr,b, informed written consent must be obtained. The ERC approved a waiver on written consent for this study because the data was collected during the period of the lock down when it was not feasible or practical to obtain written consent. The authors applied for waiver on written consent with a justification that the research could only be continued by limiting exposure, interaction and transmission of the COVID-19 during the pandemic. The process for obtaining verbal consent was fully described in the ethics application.The amendment was made on the condition that the verbal consent will only be obtained during the COVID-19 pandemic and when the pandemic has passed, the originally approved consent process will be resumed. The script of the verbal consent contains all of the elements required for written informed consent. It was submitted to the ERC for review and approval was given prior to its implementation.The authors documented the verbal consent process via audio recording. It was described to the study participants that the verbal consent for the research was used to minimize risk to the study participant. It was further stated that the safety, anonymity and confidentiality of obtained data will be maintained. At the beginning of the interview, each study participant was informed that the consent process would be audio recorded. The date, time and the name of the participant was documented. Each study participant was requested to state her name for the recording and she confirmed that she had understood the consent form. Each study participant was asked if she had any questions about the information in the consent form. The participants were informed that they have the right to withdraw from the study at any time. When the study participant expressed her willingness to participate in the study it was recorded with a declaration that the recording process of the consent is ended. Thus consent was obtained from each of the study participants. Privacy and confidentiality were maintained throughout the study by de-identifying all information from interview notes and recording.
: Participants gave consent to publish data from the interviews in non-identifiable form. In this study, the consent was not taken for the original analyzed data to be publicly available.
: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.