BALLETTEACHING BLOG

In order to process righteous and ethical research, it is important to have the approval from Institutional Review Board (IRB). There are several steps for IRB review:

1. Evaluating the research and see if it would vulnerate participants or not before sending documents to IRB.
- The plan of the survey must meet the criteria and the requirement of IRB
approval.
- The research must show maximum benefit and minimal risk to participants.
2. If no, we must apply for exemption from the review by IRB.
3. If yes, we must provide the proposal of research also attached with informed consent.
4. We must provide IRB the ongoing (everlasting) plan for future research after the initial IRB approval.

Here are the reasons why we need the approval from IRB. Participants have decision-making power and researchers have responsibility to keep participants’ personal information private. Participants’ personal information has to be properly used in research. The analysis from IRB would reduce the risk which could happen to participants. Our company would get more benefit if there is lower risk in our research. When the IRB approval of survey passes, not only do participants’ safety and human rights get protected, but the research is also guaranteed.

Based on the principle of informed consent, participants must make their own decision without any inappropriate influence, temptation, or intimidation. Besides, IRB especially emphasizes the justice during the participant selection. Informed consent has always been placed high importance on by IRB. Therefore, offering extra credit to survey participants probably will not be an acceptable tactic for the IRB approval. Also, we should not ask all participants to complete the survey as the requirement of course credit. Like what I just said, the decision-making power is upon to participants. They have full right to choose do the survey or not. If there is any vulnerable participant, we must exclude him or her from the research.

So, I would like to represent several other strategies to help conduct the survey and make participants to cooperate in the research:

1. The questions in survey must be organized and simplified. It helps participants to read, and give answer rightly. Besides, the questions must be related to research object only and avoid touching participants’ privacy. The purpose of the survey design is to make participants as much comfortable as possible.
2. If informed consent is needed, it must detail the research purpose, research method, benefits and risks. It is because informed consent provides the foundation stone of the relationship between participants and researchers. Participants have right to be completely aware of the whole research plan, and agree or disagree to participate the research plan autonomously and rationally. It would help us to pass IRB review.
3. Giving participants discounts or coupons of tuition for their following studying. It is different between tuition discount and extra credit. Giving extra credit is unjust to other students who do not want to do the survey, and makes biased when evaluating students’ grades.

The basic principles for an appropriate research are ethical and scientific. Also, science should be established based on the fundament of ethics. One of the most important issues in the Nuremberg code is: the voluntary consent from participants is absolutely necessary. I represent this proposal in terms of this theory. An impartial research would benefit both participants and our company.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 11th, 2009 at 7:12 pm and is filed under E-Business, IT, Legal and Ethical Issues in IT. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.