Common Problems and Solutions

Dual Relationships

Problems and concerns arise when the researcher's students, clients, or employees are asked to participate in research studies. As described in the Belmont Report, "respect for persons" is a guiding principle and requires that subjects enter into the research voluntarily, without feeling any undue pressure to participate.

No explicit or implicit coercion should be used to obtain research subjects. When the researcher has a relationship with the potential subjects there is a danger that the subjects will feel obligated to participate. The researcher should ensure that subjects feel free to not participate. Students, clients, and/or employees of the researcher may be unduly influenced by the expectation that participation or nonparticipation will affect their academic, treatment, or employment status.

Students may volunteer to participate out of a belief that doing so will place them in good favor with faculty, or that failure to participate will negatively affect their relationship with the investigator or faculty generally. If faculty want to include their own students as subjects, they should explain the details of the research in the consent form so that students will not feel coerced into being subjects in their teacher's research.

Faculty that are conducting human subjects research should advertise for subjects generally, through notices posted in the school or department, rather than recruit individual students directly in the classroom. This is another way to protect against coercion.

If students will be given extra credit for research participation, the researcher should offer students alternative ways to earn extra credit. The IRB should review these alternatives carefully to ensure that the alternative is no more onerous in time or effort than participation in the research study.

Clients and Employees: The problems with using clients or employees are essentially the same as with students. Professionals should inform their clients that declining to participate will not affect their treatment or any services to which they are entitled. Employers should assure employees that declining to participate will not affect their job evaluations. With both groups, confidentiality of subject participation is extremely important. Consent forms should specify how the confidentiality of the data will be ensured.

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Use of Internet for Surveys and Recruiting Subjects

Internet research raises a number of complex issues for the research community. A few of the problems involved are the risks versus the benefits, obtaining informed consent, ensuring confidentiality of data, protecting minors, and evaluating benefits of the research against the risks involved. Researchers' claims about the benefits of their research depend in large part on their ability to collect useful data. But conducting research on the Internet raises questions about data sampling techniques and the validity and reliability of the data collected. It is easy to mislead the researcher about geographical location, age, race, or gender. Minors may respond to a study involving inappropriate subject matter without the researcher knowing it.

Although survey research online is similar to traditional survey research, Internet research increases the subjects' risk of being identified or having their personal information accessed by people other than the researcher. The risk of exposure can surface at different stages, from data gathering, to data processing, to data storage and dissemination. Participants may not know that there is a record of the exchange in a cache somewhere on their system or saved in their Internet service provider's log files.

All USF researchers who are using Internet surveys are required by the IRB to:

• Include the IRB e-mail address and telephone number:

  School of Education, Room 015 Department of Counseling Psychology 2130 Fulton Street San Francisco, CA 94117-1080

  (415) 422-6091 voice (415) 422-5528 fax E-mail: irbphs@usfca.edu

• Include either a statement saying there will be no future mailings or an opt-out message that permits addressees to have their names removed from any future mailings.
  • If you plan future mailings, add a statement that says, "If you do not respond to this survey or return the opt-out message, you will be contacted again with this request x times during the next x weeks."
• Use a blind copy format so that the list of recipients will not appear in the header.
  • It is also important to ensure that respondents cannot "reply to all" recipients of a message so that the confidentiality of their responses is safeguarded.

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Classroom Projects

Many undergraduate and graduate classes include research projects using human subjects. If the goal of the project is to provide research training and the results will not be used outside of the classroom, these projects usually do not require IRB review. The Committee assumes that the faculty member directing the projects will review each project carefully and ensure that human subjects are protected from unnecessary risks. The IRB has a few guidelines to help faculty decide whether their students' research requires IRB approval.

Conditions under which IRB approval is not required for student course-related research are:

• Subjects are not identified by name or description;
• Subjects are not selected from a vulnerable or sensitive group such as alcoholics, domestic abuse victims, prisoners, homosexuals, persons in institutional or residential settings, persons with severe disability, etc.;
• Subjects are not required to reveal anything about sensitive personal experiences or behaviors.

Any project that does not comply with all of the conditions listed above should be approved by the IRB before any subjects are recruited or data are gathered.

All classes that teach research methods should include a section on the purpose of Human Subject Committees (or Internal Review Boards) before the students begin their projects. Faculty may want to ask the students to complete the web-based training module for getting informed consent from human subjects, available on the OSP home page under Compliance Requirements (www.usfca.edu/osp/compliance.htm).

This training can be completed within one hour and includes a multiple-choice test at the end. Confidentiality of their responses is safeguarded.

IRB Staff are available to make presentations to students and faculty on the purposes and procedures of H.S. protection.

Program Evaluations

Research that involves program evaluations or quality assurance may or may not need to be reviewed by the IRB. If the purpose of the project is to develop or contribute to general knowledge, it should be reviewed by the IRB. If the project is for internal purposes only, to improve or understand a program, it does not have to be reviewed by the IRB. For clarification, contact the IRB office.

Archival or Secondary Data

If researchers plan to use data that are already available to the general public, IRB reviews are not necessary. This includes data involving documents, records, pathological specimens, or diagnostic specimens that are publicly available or if the information is recorded so that subjects cannot be identified directly or indirectly. If the researcher has access to subject identities that are not available to the general public, these should not be included in any research reports.

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Research in Foreign Countries

When faculty, staff, or students conduct research with human subjects in a foreign country, there may be cultural differences that should be considered in the IRB review. Some of the differences are listed below.

Language: When documents are translated into a language other than English, the researcher should provide a copy of the document in English, a copy in the language to be used, and a letter from an unbiased individual with expertise in the language (e.g., an USF faculty member) indicating that the translated version is complete and contains the same information as the English version.

Minors: When subjects are younger than 18, researchers are required to get written parental permission. However, if local regulations are such that parental permission for research in a school setting would be inappropriate, the researcher should give the IRB proof that this is inappropriate.

Audio/video taping: When researchers audio/video tape subjects, the IRB requires a signed consent form. But in some cultures, subjects would be reluctant to sign an official form. This should be explained in the application, and the IRB will consider alternative means of documenting consent such as obtaining verbal consent. Subjects should be informed of their rights, confidentiality, and all other aspects of consent.

Non-English Speaking Subjects

When subjects do not speak or understand English well, the researcher should prepare documents in the language that subjects can understand. As described above, the researcher should provide the IRB with a copy of the document in English, a copy in the language to be used, and a letter from an unbiased individual with expertise in the language (e.g., a USF faculty member) indicating that the translated version is complete and contains the same information as the English version.

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