My major concern would be that the IRB is stepping into issues that don't concern it -- it's not the job of an IRB to meddle with issues of design that do not impact the rights and welfare of the participants. It seems to me they purport to be telling the researcher how to design the study. That seems wrong.
Whether or not the research might be confounded or might use quantitative rather than qualitative research techniques doesn't at all seem to me to be something within the purview of the IRB. That's just weird. If I were your colleague I'd send them a little note and ask them to explain why they think her design impacts the welfare of the students and their design does not. m ------ "There is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about." -- Margaret Wheatley -----Original Message----- From: Steven Specht [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, October 14, 2007 7:48 AM To: Teaching in the Psychological Sciences (TIPS) Subject: [tips] IRB Dear TIPsters, Argh! I need some help. A colleague of mine submitted a study for approval by our IRB. She proposed a pre-/post- design to assess students' attitudes before and after a particular chemistry lab experience. I can provide more detail if necessary, but the point is fairly straight-forward. The IRB rejected her proposal and told her that she should use a different assessment instrument before (i.e., pre-) and after (i.e., post-). They also told her that instead of a Likert scale, she should use open-ended questions. #1 - Changing the assessment tool from pre- to post- certainly introduces a serious confounding variable, imho #2 - Although an open-ended (qualitative?) assessment might be useful, there is nothing wrong with asking the same questions using Likert scales (and shouldn't this be a decision that the researcher makes? With regard to concern #1, I am having a bit of difficulty finding information specifically which addresses this issue (since it is so fundamental, in terms of confounding). Does anyone have any specific information from a source which indicates that the same instrument should be used to avoid confounding the research? Thank you. -S ======================================================== Steven M. Specht, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Psychology Utica College Utica, NY 13502 (315) 792-3171 "Mice may be called large or small, and so may elephants, and it is quite understandable when someone says it was a large mouse that ran up the trunk of a small elephant" (S. S. Stevens, 1958) ---
