Louis Fitzgerald
Informed consent is the bedrock of ethical research. Yet despite the growing importance of data and the ongoing commodification of our data by businesses, there exists a “privacy paradox”, which states that people express concerns about privacy, yet rarely protect their data online. Given the importance of ethical research, this study examined how people engage with information sheets and consent forms.
The current study examined whether common privacy predictors, including privacy concerns, privacy fatigue, age, and cookie-selection behaviour, influenced the duration a person spent reading the consent and information sheet of an academic study.
To build on previous studies and reduce the Hawthorne effect, this study employed deception and an eye tracker to study participants' actual behaviour unobtrusively. The study achieved a convenience sample of N=114 college students and found no significant correlation between any of the studied factors and the reading duration of the consent and information sheet. An exploratory analysis showed a significant difference in privacy concerns based on the privacy fatigue subscale of emotional exhaustion, F(2,111)= 9.98, sig <.001. These results provide quantitative and ecologically valid support for the presence of the privacy paradox in academic research, highlighting the potential interplay of psychological issues in obtaining valid informed consent in psychology research.
Hi, I'm Louis Fitzgerald a final year Applied Psychology student driven by a deep fascination with the intersection of human behaviour and scientific research and technology.
I have fallen in love research and the scientific process so much that my final year thesis examined how people read or in fact don't read information sheets and consent forms in academic research. I am a good communicator and love presenting and sharing my knowledge. This dedication to communication was recognized at the Student Psychology Congress, where I received the Best Undergraduate Presentation Oral presentation Award in April 2026 for my work on my thesis and the discussion around gaining true informed consent.
