The effects of position, context, and order on consent to data linkage in a survey

Abstract

We report on an experiment where we ask survey respondents to consent to two forms of data linkage to health records and to consent to be mailed a serology kit. We varied the placement (early, early in context or late in the survey) and order (linkage first or serology first) of the consent requests. We also examine reasons for consent or non-consent. We find that order of the requests does not make much difference, but making the requests early in the survey significantly increases consent rates over asking them after a series of content-related questions or later in the survey.