Research participant

Rights

• to be the target of beneficence
• to experience research justice
• to get respect for persons
• to have privacy for research participants
• to be informed
• to be safe from undue danger

  Terminology

• In scientific publishing, many usage commentators prefer the term participant rather than subject because the latter has a connotation to some readers of limited autonomy, as if the person were in a subservient or uninformed role. In contrast, participant connotes active consent, involvement, and awareness.
• In retrospective studies such as chart-review studies, the word participant may be a poor choice, because the persons being studied are not actively participating. Therefore, replacing the word subject with participant is only conditionally appropriate. In most such studies, the word patient may be preferable to subject, as long as all of the subjects in that study were patients.
• Not all participants are patients. Some are healthy controls. In some study designs, all the participants are patients; but in others, only some of them are. Therefore, replacing the word subject with patient is only conditionally appropriate.
• A case is an instance of disease. A patient is a person. Patients are not cases. When writing, investigators should use the words appropriately. For example, a 55-year-old patient with melanoma is not a 55-year-old case of melanoma.
• * In case-control studies especially, many instances of this distinction may arise. Although it is accepted to refer to control-group participants as controls, it is poor writing to refer to case-group participants as cases. Instead, the term case participants is used; and control participants is parallel to it.