October 2004
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What Cooperative Extension Professionals Need to Know About Institutional Review BoardsDan Weigel Randy Brown Sally Martin University of Nevada Cooperative Extension Have you ever struggled writing a proposal to your university's Institutional Review Board (IRB)? If so, you are not alone. Increasingly, Cooperative Extension professionals are expected to collect, present, or publish data about community needs, programming effectiveness, and applied research projects. Often, Extension professionals are gathering information from or about people, and such research or evaluation projects must be approved by a university's IRB. While some Extension professionals may have considerable experience with IRBs, others may lack understanding or struggle with particular issues that are involved in the IRB process. This article is the first in a four-part series designed to help Extension professionals better understand the purpose and procedures of Institutional Review Boards (IRBs). We hope to ease the confusion and frustration that can sometimes accompany the IRB process. What Is an IRB?An IRB is a review committee established to help protect the rights and welfare of human research subjects. The basic purpose of the IRB is to provide oversight to research that involves collecting data and information from or about people. The information might involve input from community members, ranchers and farmers, 4-H'ers, seniors, and so forth. Basically, the IRB is there to help ensure that when university-affiliated personnel work with people and collect information from them, it is conducted in an ethical way. IRBs are federally mandated committees. Federal regulations specify that institutions that engage in research, such as universities, must establish IRBs to oversee research involving human subjects. IRBs are composed of members from various colleges on campus as well as community members whose expertise is valuable in the review process. In some cases, Cooperative Extension personnel serve on the committees. The authors, who are Extension professionals, have a combined 19 years of experience serving on IRBs. How Cooperative Extension and IRBs InteractCooperative Extension is part of a university system and therefore falls under the same research policies and guidelines as other university units. Typically, if an Extension professional intends to publish or present the information gathered in the form of journal articles, trade articles, bulletins, fact sheets, workshops, or presentations, the project should first be approved by the IRB at the professional's institution. Information collected with no intent to publish it and used merely to evaluate the effectiveness of a program is usually not required to be reviewed by an IRB. Benefits of Working with IRBsDespite what can sometime appear as an aggravation, there are advantages to working with IRBs.
What Is Needed to Apply for IRB Approval?Although IRBs develop their own application forms, there are key elements common to all committees. It is important to keep in mind that the primary focus of the IRB review is the protection of human subjects, not the rigor of the research design, per se. Applications should address the following elements.
How Can You Help the Process Go Smoothly?Based on the authors' experiences both serving on IRBs and shepherding proposals through the process, some steps can help the process go more smoothly.
We hope that this article provides some background and explanation about the IRB process. Future articles in this series will address in greater detail: recruiting participants and vulnerable audiences, addressing risks and benefits, and handling informed consent and confidentiality. This article is online at http://www.joe.org/joe/2004august/tt1.shtml. Copyright © by Extension Journal, Inc. ISSN 1077-5315. Articles appearing in the Journal become the property of the Journal. Single copies of articles may be reproduced in electronic or print form for use in educational or training activities. Inclusion of articles in other publications, electronic sources, or systematic large-scale distribution may be done only with prior electronic or written permission of the Journal Editorial Office, joe-ed@joe.org. If you have difficulties viewing or printing this page, please contact JOE Technical Support. |