Another possible explanation for the difference between genomic studies could be the amount of time that lapsed between obtaining informed consent and debriefing the study participant. Most of the participants from the autism, brain cancer, and brain control studies were debriefed immediately after the informed consent process, while some individuals from the pancreatic cancer and liver cancer studies were not debriefed until months later (at a subsequent post-operative visit). However, when we controlled for other factors, time lapse between consent and debrief was not found to be a significant predictor of one’s final data release selection (restricted release OR, 1.00; CI, 1.00–1.01; no release OR, 1.00; CI, 0.99–1.01) (Table 4).
