The process of consenting and onboarding participants for research studies can be challenging, and this may be more so for research studies that ask the participant to collect biological samples, such as stool (faeces) or saliva. Even when consent processes are followed meticulously, and researchers explain all the procedures and protocol in detail, some participants may refuse to complete some measures when it arises (i.e. consent but then withdraw consent for certain procedure) or change their mind when they see the collection device (e.g. a needle). Some studies ask the participant to collect measures at home, and the researcher might provide videos and other materials on how to do so, but participants might still collect incorrectly collect or store the sample, rendering it unusable. This may be more likely to happen for biological samples (e.g. stool sample, menstrual blood), and it has been speculated that this is because participants are less likely to ask detailed questions about the collection procedure from a researcher, perhaps due to an ‘ick’ factor. The resultant missing samples or data, and discomfort for the participant, may be avoidable and researchers have speculated that it might help to use chatbots as part of consent and onboarding. In addition, preliminary evidence from studies done at UCC suggest that participant perceptions of the identity of the researcher (age, gender, cultural group, expertise) may be a factor, and that personalisation options in chatbots may support participants to ask more, or different, questions during onboarding and be more informed about the study measures. This, in turn, would support participant comfort and more complete data collection. The research on chatbots for consent and research onboarding processes is to-date very limited. There are other questions that are interesting to ponder - e.g. do personalisation factors built into a chatbot affect research participant comfort? ....or confidence to ask questions about sample collection (e.g. gendered chatbot for research collecting menstrual blood)?

The project will explore if chatbots can be useful (or even preferred) to support participant understanding of the requirements of research studies that collect biological samples. The team will design chatbots to simulate onboarding for a fictitious study and then evaluate the user-experience and user-understanding of research requirements, with comparison between chatbots and to a human researcher, and will examine personalisation features and their effect.