Background and Goal of Study: Recruitment of children undergoing surgical procedures is essential for medical research without violating their legal rights. This protection is established by proxy consent. Little is known about attitudes among children relatives towards surrogate consent in our country. This study was designed to measure perception and willingness to provide surrogate consent for clinical medical research among children relatives in our hospital and to assess possible factors that influence their attitudes.
Materials and methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted in Cairo University paediatric hospital from January to March 2015.Participants were first degree relatives of children scheduled for surgical procedures. A three parts questionnaire was used for data collection. Sociodemographic data were obtained first. The second part tested the general perception towards medical research by aid of a 5 items “Research Attitudes Questionnaire” (RAQ); each item was a 5 points scale (1.strongly agree, 2.agree, 3.neutral, 4.disagree, 5.strongly disagree) giving a possible score from 5 to 25; the lower the score the better the favorability. The third part was 2 hypothetical scenarios (a blood draw study and a drug trial).
Results and discussion: 250 participants (18- 49 years) were enrolled in this study, 205 mothers (82%), 45 fathers (18%); 111(44.4%) were uneducated and 139(55.6%) were educated with different levels. General perception towards medical research was favorable with a mean score 12.3 (1.4). Relatives were two times more likely to agree about participation of their children in the hypothetical blood draw study (122; 48.8% accept versus 50; 20% disagree) as they perceived it as low risk, compared to the drug trial (52; 20.8% accept versus 142; 56.8% disagree) which they perceived as high risk. Participants with secondary school (or lower) education were 4 times more likely to refuse recruitment of their child in a drug trial compared to diploma or master (OR 4.2, P 0.02). There were no associations between person's own view about surrogate consent and age or gender.
Conclusion(s): Level of perception of the importance of clinical research was high among our children relatives but the majority of them refused participation of their children in invasive clinical trials. Level of education and risk degree were the main factors in our survey influencing children relatives' agreement to participate in a clinical research.

Perception of surrogate consent for clinical research among relatives of children undergoing surgical procedures in a tertiary care university hospital in Egypt