3.2 Ongoing consent

In Section 2 we said it was good practice to use a two-stage consent process. This means that as well as interviewees having signed a consent form, the interviewer should check at the beginning of the interview that the interviewee is still happy to go ahead with the interview. It is good practice to do this after the recording has begun, so there is a record.

Signing a consent form and giving verbal consent at the beginning of an interview does not mean that participants cannot withdraw from the study. They should be free to leave the interview at any point. Interviewees should also be able to withdraw their consent for a limited period of time after the interview has finished. If an interviewee does withdraw their consent after the interview, you will stop analysing their data and destroy any recordings or transcripts. It is usual to say that interviewees can only withdraw their data up until the point when analysis has begun, as after it may be impossible to remove their individual responses from the anonymised pool of data.