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Time to Read: <5 Minutes I have had the pleasure to serve on an Institutional Review Board since 2016. The experience has benefitted me time and again as a researcher and as a friend to researchers. I have helped many of my peers with this daunting process and have realized two things: No matter which Univeristy in which state someone is attending, there are some common misconceptions about how IRB works. There is not much written specifically about the process to guide people through it. To fill that gap, I will periodically be posting about the IRB process. Note: My advice is general and will vary from school to school. I am not a lawyer or a compliance officer... just someone who wants to help. The Need for Speed The IRB process can take anywhere from a few days to a few months. This news may be shocking, especially if you defended your prelim in August, planned to collect data at a local school in September, thought you would spend October and November crafting chapters four and...

Time to Read: <2 Minutes I have had the pleasure to serve on an Institutional Review Board since 2016. The experience has benefitted me time and again as a researcher and as a friend to researchers. I have helped many of my peers with this daunting process and have realized two things: No matter which Univeristy in which state someone is attending, there are some common misconceptions about how IRB works. There is not much written specifically about the process to guide people through it. To fill that gap, I will periodically be posting about the IRB process. Note: My advice is general and will vary from school to school. I am not a lawyer or a compliance officer... just someone who wants to help. You Need IRB Approval to Conduct Research After you have completed and defended your research proposal, you must get permission from the IRB to proceed. This means no recruiting, no surveying, nothing.  Your university's office of human research protections (OHRP) is responsible for pr...

Time to Read: <4 Minutes I have had the pleasure to serve on an Institutional Review Board since 2016. The experience has benefitted me time and again as a researcher and as a friend to researchers. I have helped many of my peers with this daunting process and have realized two things: No matter which Univeristy in which state someone is attending, there are some common misconceptions about how IRB works. There is not much written specifically about the process to guide people through it. To fill that gap, I will periodically be posting about the IRB process. Note: My advice is general and will vary from school to school. I am not a lawyer or a compliance officer... just someone who wants to help. Background The whole point of an IRB is to protect humans used as guinea pigs for research. Prior to the passage of the National Research Act in 1974, a series of unregulated experiments resulted in the suffering and deaths of unwilling participants. The most famous include experiments by...

Is This Human Subjects Research? Pursuant to the National Research Act in 1974, the Belmont Report was published and federal regulations to protect human subjects (45 C.F.R. Part 46 aka "Common Rule") established requirements for the registration of IRBs. Every IRB is concerned with ethics as they apply to research with human subjects, so the first part of the IRB process is determining if the proposed activity is human subjects research . Research - An activity designed to test a hypothesis, permit conclusions to be drawn, and thereby to develop or contribute to generalizable knowledge , which is typically expressed in theories, principles, and statements of relationships. Human Participants - A study has human participants  when a researcher does any of the following with a living individual for the purpose of conducting research : interacts with them or   asks them to take part in an intervention or   manipulates their environment or collects i...

Time to Read: <2 Minutes I have had the pleasure to serve on an Institutional Review Board since 2016. The experience has benefitted me time and again as a researcher and as a friend to researchers. While helping many of my peers through this daunting process, I have realized two things: No matter which univeristy in which state someone is attending, there are some common misconceptions about how IRB works. There is not much written in terms of practical advice to guide new researchers through the IRB process. To fill that gap, I will periodically be posting about the IRB process.  Note: My advice is general and will vary from school to school. I am not a lawyer or a compliance officer... just someone who wants to help. Consider IRB While Designing Your Study Most researchers are introduced to their school's Institutional Review Board (IRB) while working on their dissertation. It is one item on a long dissertation checklist...an obstacle between proposal and research. As soon as...