High school students signed up to be subjects in a psychology experiment. When they arrive, they are told that interviews are running late, and they are taken to a waiting room. The experimenters have placed a sign in the waiting room next to a button that says, "Do not push under any circumstances." Some subjects are alone in the room and others are in pairs; these are the treatments being compared. Will the subject push the button? The students agreed to take part in an unspecified experiment, and the true nature of the experiment is explained to them afterward.

Does this meet the requirement of informed consent? Explain.

a
No, because they did not know the nature of the experiment before participating

b
No, because they had to wait for the interviews

c
Yes, because they agreed to participate in an experiment

d
Yes, because they are not forced to push the button

e
Unable to determine whether subjects consented to experiment.

If you look at the lesson's clear definition of informed consent, you can see that the participants are to be informed of what exactly the experiment entails. Only after this can the researchers get informed consent. Usually, for minors, permission is obtained from parents or guardians, but the question does not give any details about this, only that the high schoolers signed up for this. Since the prompt does not tell us that the high schoolers were informed about the nature of the experiment before they signed up, we can safely assume, they did not give informed consent.