As you draft the projects you’re planning to submit to the IRB this semester, here are a few things to keep in mind that may help speed approval of your submission:
Please pay special attention to your description of how the study data will be stored and who will have access to it. Make sure your description is accurate and specific to your study. While we have a protocol template available on the IRB’s website, don’t just pick up the protocol template language unless that language accurately describes how you’re going to manage your data.
Think long and hard about the identifiability of your data. If your study will involve a single brief interaction with subjects, with no follow up at all, do you really need to record anything that will identify the subjects? Sometimes recording data totally anonymously is the best way to safeguard subject privacy and data confidentiality. If you want to keep a list of names of people who might be interested in future research, you can still do that — just keep it in such a way that it can’t be linked to any data collected for your current study.
Start fresh with a blank protocol template and a blank consent form/information sheet, rather than trying to adapt one someone else has used for a previous study. Those adaptations very often leave in text from the previous study, which means we have to send it back to you for a correction.
Please make sure the people who will actually carry out the study upload a copy of their CV to their CLARA profile. The IRB needs to have it on file to document that the investigator is qualified to carry out the proposed study activities.