Ninth Edition CoverGraziano & Raulin
Research Methods (9th edition)

Preparing an
Institutional Review Board
Proposal

One of the most critical issues that a researcher must address in designing a research project is to address all of the possible ethical concerns. At most institutions, such as colleges and universities, all research must be approved by an Institutional Review Board or IRB. 

Although the procedures vary from one university to another, the general requirement is that the researcher prepare a brief summary of the proposed research project (2-4 double-spaced type-written pages). This brief summary emphasizes what participants will be asked to do and what they will experience as part of the study. 

Usually attached to this brief summary are copies of measures that will be used and the Informed Consent form that each participant will read and sign before they participate in the study. 

Informed Consent Form

For each of the following research studies, prepare an informed consent form. The consent form should ask the person to sign at the bottom that they understand the above explanation and that they agree to participate. Make sure that your consent form meets ethical guidelines by noting that the person (1) is free to decide not to participate, (2) can withdraw at any point without penalty, and (3) can refuse to participate in any aspect of the study.

  1. You want to study two types of training for remembering names. Each participant will be randomly assigned to spend one hour in one of the two training methods and then will be tested to see how effectively he or she can remember the names of people they meet over the next hour.

  2. You want to survey people about their sexual histories, especially their sexual experiences during high school.

  3. You want to see how much people are influenced by the behavior of other members of the group. Your participants in this study are tested in a group of five people, but unknown to them, four of the five are working for you. Those four people are to behave according to a script to see if their behavior influences the real participant in the study. The task is a perceptual discrimination task in which each of the five "participants" in the groups is asked in turn to say whether two tones are the same or different. All members of the group are able to see the responses of each of the other group members.

  4. You want to see how physical fatigue affects learning. The participants are to be randomly assigned to one of two groups. The first group will spend one hour in vigorous exercise, whereas the people in the other group will spend one hour watching an entertaining TV show. Then, both groups are asked to learn new material on which they will be tested at the end of the learning period.

IRB Proposal

The Informed Consent form is only one part of a IRB proposal. For each of the proposed studies above, write the short proposal that outlines what each participant will experience, what risks are likely or even remotely possible, and what procedures you would include to protect participants from harm.