I am not on our IRB, which is probably why your solution sounds fine to
me. I had a similar case several years ago in which we were asking people
to complete a survey while in a waiting room. We thought the best way to
ensure anonimity was to have them drop completed surveys into a box.
Thus, we could never find out who chose to participate and who
didn't (it was a busy area, so it would not have been the case that
only a single person was there). The problem became the IRB's
demand for a signed informed consent form, that would give us
information as to whehter people chose to participate or not. We
eventually got the IRB to drop the consent form, using the argument
that if people freely chose to complete the survey and put it in
the box, they were consenting.
As to why this issue comes up, ther is an excellent article in this week's
Chronicle of Higher Education about how IRB's follow a medical model
that is often "overkill" when it comes to most social science research.
Vinny
Vincent Prohaska, Ph.D.
Associate Professor and Chair
Department of Psychology
Lehman College, City University of New York
Bronx, NY 10468-1589
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
718-960-8204
718-960-8092 fax
