Table 3 Barriers to participant comprehension
Barriers | Supporting quotes |
|---|---|
Language | “Some words are in Chichewa but the way they are translated it is hard for most participants to understand, the Chichewa used is too deep and different from the spoken one” [P16]. |
Length of the informed consent | “Long informed consent form, as far as I can remember I have never used a consent form 10 pages below, so, I find this to be a barrier in a way because if you have a prospective participant, they will be here for an hour plus just consenting. But they don’t verbalize it because of the respect they have for health professionals, if you ask them, they just say oh continue I am okay. By the end of the day, you find out that they haven’t grasped much as you would want them to” [P15]. |
Misconceptions | “Mentality: they are money oriented, their only focus is on the reimbursement, so they don’t take their time to understand what the study is all about” [P04]. “Rumors/myths: no matter how much you explain, the rumors they hear prevent them from understanding” [P05]. |
Environment | “Sometimes the environment can be intimidating to the participant, like there was a time I was consenting a participant in a room where there was medical equipment, and the participant was looking allover and he said this room is not nice and he moved out because the equipment was scarring him” [P06]. |