I am a PhD candidate and I am preparing for my ethics application to conduct interviews by email in the area of women's sexual health (ie 'sensitive' topic). From the literature there seem to be a variety of acceptable options with regard to consent, from tacit agreement inherent in the decision to participate through to a variety of procedures to obtain some form of consent documentation. As I am interviewing an international rather than local group of participants, obtaining a hard copy by post or fax is problematic in terms of reimbursement of participants and in terms of dissuading people from this extra step in participation. I would be very appreciative if anyone could update me on practices that are currently deemed acceptable. The main text I am working from in terms of ethics is Mann & Stewart 2000 'Internet communication and qualitative research: A handbook for researching online.' Kind regards, Catherine Cook