Emma Rose

Dr. Clara M. Chu

LIS 600
9 September 2014
Assignment #1: IRB Certification
The process to achieve the Institutional Review Board certification was not a difficult one
by any means. It was time consuming because of all of the reading but it went by quickly
because it was interesting information about how best to conduct research with human subjects. I
think it is vital that we have something like this in place, especially after reading about the
various instances of human experimentation which were conducted immorally and/or violated
individuals rights. The certification offers so much information about what kind of research
would be reviewed by the IRB and how thoroughly. During the process of becoming certified
one learns not only how things are done with respect to the IRB but why they are done that way
by citing and teaching about various conferences, associations, reports and research that took
place in the past to change the way the IRB conducts itself.
I have my undergraduate degree in Psychology and so have learned about the
experimentation process in various courses including Psychological Statistics and
Developmental Psychology. I find that the most important aspects of conducting research with
human participants is privacy, eliminating as much risk as possible, providing information and
retrieving consent. Keeping someones results and other information private while they are
participating in research is imperative to the relationship of researcher and participant. Ideally, a
participant should be able to trust that their personal data will be protected and not divulged
unethically.

Eliminating undue risk should be an obvious goal of any researcher but there have been
experiments by the Nazis and by other institutions which have given no regard to the well-being
of the participants themselves. They say, What you dont know cant hurt you. Yet, when it
doesnt interfere with the research findings, I think it is important to inform participants of the
reasons for the experiments and what the researchers are hoping to conclude. It is important not
to bias the participants though, so giving this information after the data is retrieved may be best
for the integrity of the findings. Consent is so chief and a researcher must carefully follow the
guidelines that the IRB sets forth. If consent is not received when it should have been, valuable
data may be lost and/or participants may feel violated.
All of these aspects of collecting data are a part of giving a human participant the respect
they deserve when conducting research. Without experimentation on human participants we
would not have the great advances in Science, Psychology, Statistics, and many other fields that
we have today. Yet, without the IRB the experiments themselves would not be as greatly
advanced as they are today.