Institutional Review Board
The primary purpose of the Institutional Review Board (IRB) is to assure the safety, rights, welfare, and dignity of human subjects. The mission of the IRB is to determine whether research conducted by faculty, staff, employees, and students affiliated with Carroll College complies with applicable law, institutional policies, and standards of professional conduct and practice, while embracing the mission of Carroll College. Specifically, the IRB is given responsibility by Carroll College to review research proposals that involve the use of human subjects.
What Types of Projects Require IRB Approval?
If you are a student, faculty or staff member of Carroll College, doing research that involves collecting information or data about human subjects, or testing/measuring human participants in any way, you need to know the following:
- You need to have Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval before you involve human subjects in your research.
- If you do not have IRB approval for human-subjects research (unless it is exempt from IRB oversight), your research project will not be recognized by Carroll College and will not be accepted to fulfill academic requirements that require IRB approval.
- The IRB will not review and give retrospective approval for research that has already been conducted.
Federal regulations and Carroll College policies require IRB approval for research and projects involving the gathering of information about living human subjects. These regulations and policies serve to protect the rights and welfare of human participants and apply to human subjects research conducted individually or collectively (in a class or in groups) by Carroll College faculty, staff, or students.
Independent student research projects in which human subjects are involved, either directly or through the use of their data, require IRB approval. Examples of such projects include research projects conducted by Carroll College honors students in conjunction with honors requirements; projects by students individually enrolled in an independent study or research practicum with a professor; and projects by students planning to present their findings at a conference or Carroll's Student Undergraduate Research Festival (SURF).
In-class projects that involve human subjects may require IRB approval. Class-based research conducted with human subjects must be approved by the IRB if results from the research are presented outside of a classroom setting (for example: SURF, local, regional or national conferences) in any form, including poster presentations or talks. Class projects that are conducted solely for educational purposes do not qualify as research, and therefore do not require IRB approval.
Projects not involving information about human subjects do not require IRB approval.
Faculty should consult the Document 7, IRB Guidelines for Student Projects, available on this website, to determine if proposed research requires IRB review and approval.