At my former university I did have to submit class projects which would take place outside of class to the IRB. Actually I think it was the IRB chair or staff person who reviewed them and not the full IRB. They were willing to take something fairly generic; they tended to be more interested in the methods than in the content unless the content was going to get into illegal activities. When I taught survey research I had the students do their own IRB. I developed a checklist for the groups to use in reviewing the "applications" that I developed from the NIH IRB Guidebook. This would also be useful for any course in which students design their own research projects. The students learned about human subject review and got some useful suggestions from the other students. The IRB Guidebook cost $30 when I ordered it several years ago. There also is a free videotape you can obtain from NIH which has three segments - 22 minutes on the history of why protection is needed and how it came about, 36 minutes that shows an IRB in action and explains the criteria they use, and 28 minutes on the basic ethical principles that uneerlie human subject research. Many university IRBs have the videotape for training new IRB members. Joyce Morris [EMAIL PROTECTED] Public Health Sciences Wichita State University
