The Informed Consent Process for Adults with Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities

Mom and dad with son with Down syndr ome signing a paper

The purpose of this toolkit is to present ways for you to better include individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) in research. It provides strategies to make the informed consent process go more smoothly for your participants with IDD.

Individuals with IDD are often excluded from health-related research. Exclusion from research leads to reduced quality of health care and unknown treatment effectiveness. This contributes to overall health disparities in this population. One of the often-perceived barriers to inclusion of research participants with IDD is the informed consent process. Through this toolkit we aim to provide strategies to make this an easier and more successful process for you as the researcher and your participants with IDD. Click here to access a free PDF of the toolkit.


Top photo by Adobe Stock

[October 2024]