Research Involving Audio or Video Recording
The university encourages obtaining written permission before making audio or video recordings of anyone in a public venue. This is particularly important when children are recorded. No special form is recommended by the institution for this purpose.
If the recordings are being made as part of a research project, the IRB will typically require that written consent or permission be obtained prior to making the recording. There are a variety of ways that audio and video may be recorded and used in relation to research that have a bearing on how and from whom consent is required.
For example, a researcher may wish to make a video of UNI students engaged in a particular activity, and then use that video as stimuli in a research experiment. The researcher should obtain permission from the students before making the video, but if that is the only use the video will be put to, the IRB will not require consent from the students, because they are not actually the subjects of the research. Consent will be required for the research participants before they watch the video and do other activities as part of the research.
A common scenario at UNI would be a dual training and research project, in which the investigators are training public school teachers to implement a new teaching method. Each teacher is requested to videotape themselves in the classroom using the new method and the investigators subsequently view those videos to assess how well the teacher is implementing the method. If there are students shown in the video but 1) their behavior is not the target of the research, 2) no data about the children in the video is assessed or recorded, and 3) the video will not be shown to anyone outside the research team, then parental permission to include the children in the video may not be required. If, however, the investigators want to analyze the children’s behavior for research purposes and/or additional information is being gathered about the children, then the children and the teachers both would be considered research participants, and thus teacher consent, youth assent, and parental permission would all be required.
If the students are not research participants, but the research team wants to show the videos at a later training or conference to demonstrate the effectiveness of the method, then parental permission would not be required by the IRB but is nevertheless strongly encouraged, as always, before showing videos of children.
In the event that investigators are taping children in any setting to document their behavior for research purposes, only those children who assent and have parental permission may be actually shown in the video. Optimally, the children who have parental permission (and thus are the research participants) will be physically separated from those who do not. If this is completely impossible, the IRB may approve (depending on the sensitivity of the research) videotaping all of the children and subsequently blanking out the faces of those not in the research, before showing the videos in presentations, etc. Or, it may be most appropriate to tape all of the children, analyze/record behavior of only those who are the research participants, then destroy the tapes altogether, or only retain clips of participants with permission/assent.
Another consideration when making videos or audiotapes for research purposes, such as for individual interviews, is perhaps offering participants the option to consent to the research and to the recording separately. If the researcher does not want to conduct interviews with anyone who is not willing to be recorded, then this consideration is not relevant. But if the researcher would like to record everyone, but is willing to interview someone who does not want to be recorded, then it might be best to include a “yes” or “no” to recording as a specific clause in the consent form. That way the participant can consent to the research but still say “no” to being recorded.