Writing readable consent forms: how useful is the advice given by IRBs?

Institutional review boards (IRBs) often provide researchers with advice about how to write readable consent forms (CFs) for human subjects research. This work reports on the type, amount, and accuracy of advice given on 30 IRB Web sites. Our findings suggest that this advice, while well-intended, is often weak or uneven in one or more of these areas. This study provides insight into the assumptions that one type of bureaucratic body holds about how to construct readable prose and into how it communicates those assumptions to subject-matter experts. It also demonstrates one mechanism through which (sometimes faulty) assumptions about writing are perpetuated and legitimatized.