Background: The factors influencing parents’ willingness to enroll their children in biobanks are poorly understood. This study sought to assess parents’ willingness to enroll their children, and their perceived benefits, concerns, and information needs under different consent and data-sharing scenarios, and to identify factors associated with willingness. Methods: This large, experimental survey of patients at the 11 eMERGE Network sites used a disproportionate stratified sampling scheme to enrich the sample with historically underrepresented groups. Participants were randomized to receive one of (...) three consent and data-sharing scenarios. Results: In total, 90,000 surveys were mailed and 13,000 individuals responded (15.8% response rate). 5737 respondents were parents of minor children. Overall, 55% (95% confidence interval 50–59%) of parents were willing to enroll their youngest minor child in a hypothetical biobank; willingness did not differ between consent and data-sharing scenarios. Lower educational attainment, higher religiosity, lower trust, worries about privacy, and attitudes about benefits, concerns, and information needs were independently associated with less willingness to allow their child to participate. Of parents who were willing to participate themselves, 25% were not willing to allow their child to participate. Being willing to participate but not willing to allow one’s child to participate was independently associated with multiple factors, including race, lower educational attainment, lower annual household income, public health care insurance, and higher religiosity. Conclusions: Fifty-five percent of parents were willing to allow their youngest minor child to participate in a hypothetical biobank. Building trust, protecting privacy, and addressing attitudes may increase enrollment and diversity in pediatric biobanks. (shrink)

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From the beginning of the seventeenth century it has generally been held that the second Medicean is the parent of all the other extant manuscripts. In two articles C. W. Mendell has demonstrated that Leidensis B.P.L. 16. B is the manuscript once owned by Rudolphus Agricola and later by Th. Ryck, whose edition makes frequent allusion to its readings. Mendell's attempt to show further that L represents a tradition independent of the Medicean has found little support until recently, when E. (...) Koestermann, in the course of preparing the latest Teubner edition of Annals and Histories became convinced from his own study of L that Mendell's view—in spite of some arguments of dubious validity—was essentially correct. In an article in Philologus and in the preface to his edition of Histories Koestermann has marshalled the arguments which he believes prove L's independence of the Medicean line of descent. Since the new valuation that Koestermann puts upon L has produced a drastic revision of both text and apparatus criticus in his new editions, it may be worth while to examine the evidence that Koestermann adduces in support of his belief in L's independence. (shrink)