> They may very well be exempt from IRB approval, but it's up to the
> IRB to make the determination. That's why I said "IRB review"
> rather than "IRB approval". I suppose I could have said that the
> information "might be considered data collected for research
> purposes".
If the professor is not doing research but is moonlighting as a
marketing consultant for the educational publisher, it's not even clear
that the IRB gets a look-in - any more than, if said professor were
instead playing the piano in a bordello between lectures, the IRB would
have to determine whether it got to OK the tunes. More realistically:
if I canvas for a political party during the runup to an election, I am
doing research of a type involving human subjects. But because I'm doing
it for political reasons rather than scientific reasons, I don't have to
ask the review board.
The ethics questions seem to be (a) conflict of interest WRT payment
for selecting one set of course material and (b) use of the university's
data for consulting. The first is definitely wrong, the second iffy.
It's not clear where the "black line" lies between this sort of
consulting and (for instance) using your own classroom experience,
including memories or records of how students did on tests, to improve a
textbook you are writing yourself.
-Robert Dawson
.
.
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