IRB
Approval of Research Projects Involving Human Participants
All research, however limited, conducted by individuals affiliated with the University of Illinois must be reviewed prior to initiation of the project. The Institutional Review Board (IRB) of the University has established standards to protect the rights of individuals involved in research. No data may be collected until written approval of the proposal and consent form has been secured. All research must be supervised by a member of the University of Illinois faculty.
Projects must be submitted to the campus level IRB unless they meet the specific exceptions noted below. Information regarding the form for submission to the IRB and requirements for approval are available at the IRB website: http://www.irb.uiuc.edu.
Some projects, labeled “exempt” because they are exempt from review by the campus-level committee, may be submitted to the Department of Speech Communication Committee on the Use of Human Participants. Only projects that meet all of the conditions noted below may be submitted to the departmental committee:
- The project has no external funding.
- The project involves no more than minimal risk, which typically is construed as risk that does not exceed that of daily life.
- The project does not involve a vulnerable population (see IRB website).
- The project employs a methodology that is exempt from review by the campus-level IRB (see the website identified above for a complete description of exempt projects).
- For Speech Communication Projects, exempt projects are commonly limited to those that involve interviews, surveys, or observation of public behavior when the information obtained cannot be linked in any way to a specific individual.
- Projects that involve a manipulation or intervention typically cannot be construed as exempt.
Projects reviewed at the departmental level should be submitted on the same form used for submission to the campus-level IRB and are subject to the same standards as those imposed by the campus-level IRB. Three copies of the proposal and consent form should be submitted in triplicate to Ruth Anne Clark.
Some class projects may be reviewed by the instructor only. These are restricted to projects that meet all of the requirements for departmental review and are also ones that the researcher guarantees will not be presented in any form outside of the classroom. That is, results of these projects may never be presented at professional meetings, published, or disseminated in any way outside of the classroom.