[Air-L] IRBs

[Lois Ann Scheidt]

Most - if not all - IRBs in the USA are most definitely NOT making up 
rules.  What they are doing is "slotting" new research into an 
established series of definitions and federal requirements as well as 
reviewing their own past practice.  Like Dr. Kirby, I too was once told 
I would need to garner names and addresses of the participants in the 
chatroom I was studying...the requirement I was given was a bit more 
complicated then Dr. Kirby's project so I will leave the specifics out.

During the discussion with IRB personnel I asked WHY I had to do this 
and was told that my chatroom was being compared to a focus 
group...there is no "chatroom" criteria in the regulations.  Because of 
time constrains I chose to rework my research leaving out the part that 
would have necessitated my gathering names and addresses.

Of course, I could have, and now would, make a good argument that 
chatrooms bear more in common with public squares than they do to focus 
groups...I was new at this then and let it pass.

My advise...if you are given requirements that don't make sense to you 
then ask what your project is being compared to from the regulations.  
Then you can prepare a good case to educate the folks on your venue.
Lois Ann Scheidt

Doctoral Student - School of Library and Information Science, Indiana
University, Bloomington IN USA

Adjunct Instructor - School of Informatics, IUPUI, Indianapolis IN USA and
IUPUC, Columbus IN USA

Webpage:  http://www.loisscheidt.com
Blog:  http://www.professional-lurker.com


Quoting Christian Nelson <xianknelson at mac.com>:

> That is stupid, and shows complete ignorance of the federal
> governments guidelines. There are a lot of IRBs out there who are
> simply making up their own rules, which is foolish.
>
> On Mar 8, 2008, at 2:18 PM, Marj Kibby wrote:
>
>> Given the research being done in medicine here I think our IRB does
>> waste too much time policing cultural studies research where the
>> potential for harm is comparably negligible.
>>
>> For a student project they insisted that we get the names and
>> addresses of discussion forum participants who were being
>> 'interviewed' through the forum - so that we could send them a
>> ststement saying we wouldn't use their names and addresses.
>>
>> Marj
>>
>>
>>
>> Dr Marjorie Kibby,
>> Senior Lecturer in Communication & Culture
>> Faculty of Education and Arts
>> The University of Newcastle,  Callaghan NSW 2308 Australia
>> Marj.Kibby at newcastle.edu.au
>> +61 2 49216604
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>
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