ABA Family Legal Guide

Health-Care Law

Regulating Health-Care Professionals

Research on Humans

What about research on children and the elderly?

The goal is to allow researchers to study children and the elderly while at the same time protecting them from abuse and mistreatment. Neither a child nor an elderly person suffering from a mental illness such as Alzheimer's has the legal capacity to consent to being part of a research study. So how can researchers study people who cannot consent to being studied?

Researchers must get consent from the parents or guardians of the people they wish to study in order to proceed with the research. When the research is on children, the researcher must also get assent from the children who participate.