Human Subjects Research Approval

Korrin B.

October 13, 2010 - 3:00 PM

As I stated in a previous post, my first thesis deadline for the term was to fill out my application to get Human Subjects Research approval. Since I will be interviewing people as part of my thesis research, I needed to get this approval prior to contacting my interviewees. I thought that this would be a fairly simple process, but it ended up taking quite a bit more effort than I originally expected!

The first part of the process was to pass the Institutional Review Board (IRB) test to be certified as a human subjects researcher. This involved doing a lot of reading about the history of human subjects research and the ethical standards that must be followed while conducting such research. I learned about confidentiality, consent, recruitment, and a lot more. The information was all very good stuff to know. In order to pass the test, I had to take four different quizzes each covering different topics related to doing human subjects research. I had to have a total score of 80% or above.

After passing this certification, it was on to the actual application to be submitted for review. Since a lot of human subjects research assumes medical testing and is more geared toward students in the sciences, I had to answer a lot of questions that weren't relevant to my study at all. These included questions about the use of human body fluids, psychological testing, and drug interactions.

In addition to filling out the main meat of the application, I also had to fill out two attachments to the application since I plan on using email to communicate with my subjects and use tape recording devices for the interviews.

Along with the attachments, I had to supply samples of all of my documents that would be included in the research. The first of these was my recruitment document. I had to type up what the letter would look like that I would be emailing to my interviewees to ask for an interview. The second document was a consent form. All of my interviewees will have to sign this lengthy document consenting to participate. The language of it and all of the warnings and such end up making my research seem a lot more intense than it really is! My final document was a list of all of the questions that I plan on asking the participants.

Once everything was all together, I took it in to have my thesis advisor look it over and sign it. Next, I put it in campus mail to be sent off for review. My advisor said I should hear back within about two weeks and then I can get started on contacting people for interviews. It was a really good process for me to go through despite being so tedious. It taught me a lot about professional standards to researching.

While in my advising appointment, we also outlined my thesis and set my next deadline for two weeks when we meet again. My next deadline is to write the first draft of the background section of my thesis. I felt good after we outlined it because I realized that I am pretty on top of it so far and have most of the research I need to write at least half of it now. I also got the second member of my thesis committee last week. Professor Louise Bishop will be my honors college thesis advisor. Now all I need for my thesis committee is a second reader. I am hoping to get this person from somewhere in the city or county government who deals directly with this policy area. It is all so exciting!