[Air-l] IRB permissions for online gaming studies?

[Michele Jackson]

Hello - I have a student conducting a thesis on the communicative behavior
in online games (one will be a U.S. game such as Everquest and another will
be a Chinese game).  She would like to conduct participant observation. We
are having difficulties with our IRB (Committee that approves research on
Human Subjects), primarily because players may be children.  Research that
involves children requires parental consent. Another problem is that the IRB
at my university does not have experience with this type of research, and so
they don't have models to draw on (or to guide us).

I am interested in hearing from anyone who has been able to gain approval
for this type of research - your help is much appreciated -

mj

Michele H. Jackson, PhD
Dept of Communication University of Colorado
Boulder, CO  80309-0270
303-492-8139     jackson at colorado.edu
http://comm.colorado.edu/mjackson