Search Results for: IRB

I recently attended the 2022 NASPA Student Success in Higher Education Conferences (composed of Assessment, Persistence, and Data Analytics; Dismantling Systemic Barriers to Student Success; and First-Generation Student Success conferences). It really is a quality professional development opportunity, so I highly recommend attending in the future if you have the opportunity. I presented a session on the politics and ethics of student affairs assessment. For this month’s blog, I will focus on the ethical issues.

What words or phrases come to mind when you think about ethics? You might think of values, morals, doing the right thing, integrity, rules of behavior, honesty, etc. When thinking about ethics specific for student affairs assessment, you might think about accuracy, protection, confidentiality, privacy, fairness, equity, etc. While ethics are an individual matter, they are also based in an organizational or group context. Kitchener (in Applied Ethics in Student Affairs, 1985) described five principles that should guide students affairs practice, and they can be applied to assessment specifically. Respecting autonomy allows people to choose whether to participate or not (i.e., no coercion). Doing no harm means that you would not risk hurting others. Thinking beyond physical harm, assessment harm could be about ensuring confidentiality and ensuring instruments are culturally appropriate. Benefiting others could be about the immediate benefit to participants but also providing benefits to others through decisions made from assessment results. Being just means being fair, equitable, and impartial. It could also mean providing programs and services to all students if assessment results show a benefit to students who were assessed in a program. Finally, being faithful is about being honest. Rarely would assessment involve deception, and potential participants should be notified about the purpose of the assessment (i.e., informed consent). The big takeaway is that people who are engaged in the assessment process do right by their participants, the organization, and the larger society.

National associations also have ethical standards and/or guiding principles they expect members to follow. The American Educational Research Association (AERA) has a code of ethics that address the work of educational researchers. ACPA—College Student Educators International also has a statement of ethical principles and standards for student affairs practitioners. I encourage you to look at websites of associations you belong to or that are similar to your work, in order to see the ethical and behavioral expectations.

Nearly all campuses have an Institutional Review Board that assists researchers in ethical behaviors and makes sure participants are not harmed. The U. S. Department of Health and Human Services regulates the protection of “human subjects” (i.e., participants) in the research process. Some institutions require all data collection projects to go through the review process, while others have a clear distinction between what is research and what is assessment. See my previous blog about IRBs, and always contact your institutional board if you have any questions. Even if your assessment project does not go through the IRB, it is important that you are trained on ethical principles.

I hope this helps you reflect not only on your personal ethical principles, but also how you see those principles applied in an organizational setting. If you have not already, you might reach out to colleagues to have discussions on this topic or even develop your own code of ethics. Student Affairs Planning, Assessment & Research created and continues to revisit our Standards of Ethical Practice.

Every now and then, Student Life Studies’ staff gets asked, “Does this project need to go to the Institutional Review Board (IRB)? Every now and then, Student Life Studies’ staff says, “This project definitely needs to go to the IRB.” So, what exactly is the IRB and why would projects need their approval? Keep in mind that every campus has different processes and procedures, so Texas A&M is different than other institutions.

I’ll hit some of the basics, but to really understand the role of the IRB at Texas A&M, see https://vpr.tamu.edu/human-research-protection-program/. That website will describe the definitions, steps for approval, resources, and training requirements. The IRB is here to protect humans (living subjects) in the research process (a systematic investigation resulting in generalizable knowledge). In research, the investigator gathers identifiable data about people through some sort of intervention or interaction. But, not every data collection activity requires IRB approval. In many cases in the Division of Student Affairs, assessment is completed to improve a specific program or improve student learning in a particular activity. Those data collection functions, although inherently involving interacting with humans, do not have the purpose to create new, generalized knowledge. Alternatively, there are topics/people that Student Life Studies would recommend IRB review. Those typically include sensitive topics or groups (alcohol/drugs, illegal activity, sexual activity, sexual misconduct, minors, cognitively impaired adults, pregnant women, prisoners, etc.) or cases when you know you want to publish the results. I hope you can see where there might be overlap or questions between program improvement data collection and human subjects research.

The IRB offers/requires training for any investigator. If you are just collecting some feedback about your program to make changes for next year, you might think you don’t need to take the IRB training. But, the training provides good information about the ethics of data collection, regardless of whether you are conducting actual research. Texas A&M uses the Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative (CITI) as the online training system. The nice thing is that the training is good for five years before you have to do a refresher course. The course can be accessed at https://rcb.tamu.edu/humans/training/human-subject-protection-training-in-citi .   Although not the most exciting of professional development options, it is still important to student affairs staff who collect any data.

If you need to submit a proposal to the IRB, there are several steps to complete and questions needing answered. This page https://vpr.tamu.edu/human-research-protection-program/approval-process/before-you-submit/,  provides an overview of the documents that you will need. To understand the questions on the application, see the Socio-Behavioral Protocol Template at https://rcb.tamu.edu/humans/toolkit/templates/templates  When you are ready to submit, you log into the iRIS portal at https://iris.tamu.edu/shibboleth-ds/index.html. The instructions at https://vpr.tamu.edu/human-research-protection-program/approval-process/how-to-submit/ walk you through the process. The questions can be confusing because of some of the jargon, so feel free to reach out to the IRB hotline at 845-4969 or the general office number, 458-4067, to find the Division of Student Affairs liaison.

I hope this information gave you an introduction to the IRB with resources you can access for more detail. Feel free to reach out to Student Life Studies for assistance as well. We are always here to help.

 

*The overview provided here is very simplified. Please refer to the IRB or Student Life Studies for more specific information.

You may have heard the terms “assessment” and “research” used interchangeably. Are they really the same thing? Does it matter? (And that doesn’t even include throwing “evaluation” into the mix!) There have even been recent debates among professionals about it. (<a href=”http://www.presence.io/blog/assessment-and-research-are-different-things-and-thats-okay/”>http://www.presence.io/blog/assessment-and-research-are-different-things-and-thats-okay/</a>, <a href=”https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2016/11/21/how-assessment-falls-significantly-short-valid-research-essay”>https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2016/11/21/how-assessment-falls-significantly-short-valid-research-essay</a>, <a href=”https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/abc.21273″>https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/abc.21273</a> )

In my opinion, assessment and research have a lot in common. They are about collecting data to learn something, they use similar data collection methodologies (qualitative and quantitative), they require knowledge and practice to be effective, and they are important to student affairs and higher education. There are expectations of good practice in both areas.

On the other hand, there are some key differences. The purpose of research is to create generalizable knowledge, that is, to be able to make credible statements about groups of people beyond one campus. It might be about first year college students, new professionals in student affairs, or college graduates in STEM fields. Research may also be used to develop new theories or test hypotheses. Assessment is typically confined to one program, one campus, or one group. In that case, the purpose is to collect information for improvement to that particular area of interest. Assessment rarely would set up an experimental design to test a hypothesis. The results are not meant to apply to a broader area, but they are key to decision making. Assessment can provide reasonably accurate information to the people who need it, in a complex, changing environment.

The timing of research and assessment may differ. Research may have more flexibility in the time it takes for data collection because it may not be tied to one particular program, service, or experience that will change. Alternatively, assessment may be time bound, because the information is being collected about a particular program or service, so changes can be implemented. It may be an event that occurs on an annual basis, information is needed for a budget request, or data needs to be provided for an annual report.

The expectations of response rate may also be different. Of course, everyone wants a high response rate that reflects the population of interest. Realistically, though, that may not happen. In research, there may be more effort and resources to recruit respondents over a longer time or use already collected large data sets. There may be effort to determine if late responders were similar to early responders or if more recruitment needs to happen. In assessment, partially because of the time-bound nature, and the over-assessment of college students, staff may have to settle for the response rate they get and decide if the results are credible.

The audience may also differ. Ideally, all professionals should be keeping up with the literature in their field based on sound research. Research results are published in journals for other researchers to see and use. More narrow, though, assessment provides (hopefully) useful information to decision makers and practitioners about their particular area.  In the big picture, assessment results can inform research questions and vice versa.

Research typically requires Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval, before collecting data from “human subjects.” That board wants to ensure that people are not harmed and appropriate processes are followed. Because of the narrow focus, and usually low risk nature, assessment is typically excused from the IRB process.

All in all, both assessment and research belong in student affairs and higher education. They are important to individual campuses and departments. They just may look a little different in the structure and use. Practitioners need to access both to be the best they can be.