IRB and Data Collection

IRB at a Glance

IRB stands for Institutional Review Board and is the body that approves all studies involving human subjects. The purpose of the IRB is to ensure that harm to human participants is mitigated and they are properly given informed consent before participating in a study. There are three kinds of IRB reviews:

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• Full: required when there is risk to a participant (e.g., in a clinical study that tests a new medication or medical device)​

• Expedited: when minimal to no risk is involved (e.g., a qualitative study involving interviews or a quantitative study involving taking a survey)

• Exempt: when no human participants are involved (e.g., when secondary data is used)

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There are usually two elements to an IRB application: i) the application itself and ii) supplementary materials, which may include:​

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• Informed consent letter​

• Recruitment materials

• Study information sheet

• Permissions to use secondary data or instrumentation 

• Survey or questionnaire mock-ups

• Interview/focus group protocols 

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Many doctoral studies are rejected by the IRB if they involve vulnerable populations or if you do not clearly lay out how you protect participants' identify and data. 

After the IRB approves your study, you will be able to begin data collection. For qualitative studies, this usually involves recruiting, scheduling interview/focus groups, conducting the interviews, and having the audio transcribing for coding, and uploading the transcripts to a software like NVivo or Atlas.ti For quantitative studies, this usually involves disseminating a link to a survey, collecting responses, cleaning the data of missing or incomplete response, and uploading the raw data to a software like SPSS​.