Research projects involving the use of human participants conducted by psychology faculty, staff, and students must be reviewed by Illinois State University's Institutional Review Board (IRB) for compliance with the Office of Human Research Protections (OHRP) guidelines. This includes research conducted on and off-campus and research completed by graduate students for theses or dissertations. Proposals are first reviewed by the Department of Psychology Expedited Review Panel (DERP) and are then forwarded to the University's IRB. In some cases, proposals will undergo additional ethical review. For example, an off-campus nursing home may conduct a separate review for research conducted at its site. In addition,Thomas Metcalf School, although part of Illinois State, conducts its own ethical review in addition to that conducted by the IRB. Researchers conducting off-campus projects need to check with the external site to determine whether a separate review by that site is required.

To start the ethics review process, researchers should obtain and complete the IRB Protocol Submission Form, which is available on the department's Research Web site. Completion of this form includes a brief description of the project and its methodology, an identification of the project's risks and benefits, and considerations made for special or protected populations. Researchers should include any measures or materials used in the study unless these are standard, readily reviewed materials. In addition, researchers must include an informed consent form and debriefing statement. If the researcher is not a faculty member of the Department of Psychology, a faculty sponsor must be consulted and listed as the principal investigator. Two copies of the completed form are to be submitted to the department IRB representative for review. The department IRB representative will keep one copy of the submission and forward the other copy to the IRB after the proposal is reviewed at the departmental level. The entire review process takes approximately two to six weeks, depending upon the level of review.

When the submission has been approved by the IRB, the researcher will receive an electronic letter of notification. This letter outlines the conditions under which the research may be conducted as well as the duration of the approval. It is the researcher's responsibility to keep this letter. If any substantive changes are subsequently made in the conditions of participant treatment in the project, the researcher must submit a memo to the department IRB Representative outlining the proposed changes for review and approval by the IRB. If additional approval time is required for the research project, the researcher must notify the IRB of this request at least four weeks prior to the expiration date given in the approval letter.

Protecting Participant Rights

Participation in research is voluntary for all potential research participants, including but not limited to students enrolled in psychology courses in which some form of research participation is allowed or required. Moreover, participants have the right to withdraw from an ongoing procedure at any time without prejudice (i.e., with full compensation and no coercion to continue). Any published documents referring to data collected from human participants must protect the confidentiality of those participants. Unless an exemption has been approved by the IRB, researchers must secure informed consent from participants before collecting data. Students must be at least 18 years of age in order to give informed consent to participate in research; parent/guardian consent is required for participants under the age of 18. The informed consent document should provide potential participants a description of the study, nature of participation, purpose of the study, duration of the research, possible risks, possible benefits, assurances regarding confidentiality, right to withdraw without penalty, and opportunities for participants to have questions or concerns regarding the research addressed. Specific guidelines for informed consent accompany the IRB Protocol Submission Form.

Recruiting Participants through the Psychology Participant Pool

Use of the department's Participant Pool requires additional procedures. Once a project has been approved by the IRB, a copy of the letter of approval must be presented to the staff of the Psychology Resource Center (PRC; DeGarmo 17) for registration of the project. A security code word, which will be used to identify the project, is required when registering the research. The security code must be a common word, which is easy for participants to remember, but which does not convey or imply anything about the nature of the research. The security code word must be both connotatively and denotatively neutral.

Only after the project has been registered with the PRC staff may researchers solicit participants through the department's Participant Pool. Researchers may reserve rooms for research and obtain participant report cards from the PRC staff. The header form and blank sign-up sheets (one version for group studies and one version for individual studies) are available on the Psychology Research Web site. Researchers should fill out the header form completely, noting the security code and location in large characters, and post it on the participant pool bulletin board in the lower level of DeGarmo Hall. Header sheets also must list any participant requirements, including a statement that participants must be at least 18 years of age (unless this requirement has been waived by the IRB for a particular study or unless the researcher has made arrangements to obtain parent/guardian consent for students under the age of 18).

For studies in which groups of participants are being solicited for a single time slot, the group sign-up sheet should be used, with the available dates, days, times, and locations filed in. These sign-up sheets must remain posted until the listed times have expired. For studies in which only one participant per time slot is being solicited, an individual sign-up sheet is used. The available dates, days, times, and locations are filled in, and the memo stubs are available participants. Participant report cards are given to participants to document their attendance at the research session. Cards must be filled out completely by the researcher. Credit is determined in units depending on the time required for participation in the research (e.g., up to 30 minutes is .5 units, between 30 and 60 minutes is 1 unit, between 60 and 90 minutes is 1.5 units, etc.). Researchers should calculate the maximum expected time necessary to complete the research and allot extra credit units accordingly; thus, all participants receive the same amount of extra credit for a given study, even if some finish more quickly than others. If the research requires more than one session, credit is given as if there were multiple projects, however, credit may be withheld until the final session.

It is important for researchers to check posted sign-up sheets frequently. Researchers are responsible for attending all appointments on time. Researchers must contact participants 24 hours in advance to cancel an appointment; any participant who is not contacted must be met and given extra credit. Any known failures on the part of the researcher to keep appointments will be reported to the department's IRB representative. Penalties for failure to keep appointments may include, but are not limited to the following: For every substantiated case of a failure to keep an appointment, the researcher will be denied access to the participant pool for one week. If more than three separate cases are identified, the researcher will be denied access to the participant pool for the remainder of the current academic semester.

Before participation, each participant must read and sign an informed consent document (unless this requirement has been waived by the IRB). After participation, each participant must be debriefed. Participants are not permitted to decline debriefing.

The researcher is responsible for clearing his/her materials from the participant pool bulletin board at the conclusion of the study. This should be done shortly after the completion of the study in order to allow sufficient room for other researcher projects to be announced. Additional considerations when using the department's Participant Pool are as follows:

1. Research participation may be offered as one means of earning extra credit in any psychology course, at the instructor's discretion. Research participation may be included as a course requirement (with suitable alternatives) in PSY 111 and PSY 231.

2. If applicable, research participation opportunities or requirements (and alternatives) must be outlined clearly in the course syllabus (see the department's Research Web site for a sample syllabus). Credit for research participation, or its alternatives, should account for no more than 10% of a student's course grade. To avoid any possibility of indirect coercion, instructors including research participation for extra or course credit must also provide their students with reasonable alternatives to research participation, which should be approximately equivalent in both time and effort. In addition, instructors must not make special announcements about their own studies or offer additional incentives for students to participate in their own research studies.

3. A statement concerning participants' rights will appear on the researcher sign-up bulletin board and on the Instructions to Research Participants page on the department's Research Web site. Immediately prior to participation, participants will again read a statement about their rights on the informed consent document for the research and will indicate understanding by their signature.

4. On IRB proposals for which recruitment of participants involves the department's Participant Pool, researchers should provide a link to the department's Research Web site in order to facilitate the review by reviewers from outside the department.

5. The department's Participant Pool is reserved for use by faculty and students affiliated with the department. Occasionally, individuals not affiliated with the department may be granted permission to use the participant pool for research that is of a psychological nature. Any individuals not affiliated with the department who wish to use the participant pool to conduct psychological research must:

A. Involve a department faculty member as a collaborator or supervisor. The purpose of this requirement is to ensure that a local contact person is available to handle any questions or problems that arise as the research is being conducted; and
B. Follow usual procedures for obtaining IRB approval for projects originating in department (i.e., submit two copies of the proposed research protocol to the department's IRB representative).

Cases involving failure to meet these and all relevant ethical guidelines will be referred to the IRB. Such proceedings may involve the appearance of all those involved before the IRB.