1. Grant or Research Deadlines: HARRC will make every effort to meet on a weekly basis during the academic year and to act in a timely fashion (several days to two weeks) on all submitted protocols. However, it is the responsibility of the researcher to ensure that HARRC approval is obtained prior to research or grant deadlines. In other words, don’t submit a protocol the day before you need action on it.

2. Research that won’t be Published or Presented: Research-like activities are often undertaken for educational purposes or as pilot studies for future research. It is common in these circumstances for investigators to assume that since they don’t intend to present or publish the research they do not need to gain HARRC approval for their activity. Strictly speaking this is true. However, the investigator is out of luck if the activity produces unexpected or compelling results that merit presentation to a wider audience. In other words, it’s better to have approval for your activity and not need it then vice versa.

3. Informed Consent: Approval for a human subject’s protocol cannot be granted unless all pertinent parts of the informed consent form are present. It is advisable to double-check the information for informed consent forms page or to simply manipulate the sample informed consent form that we’ve provided.

4. Anonymity and Confidentiality: One of the primary responsibilities of HARRC is ensuring that research subject’s understand the extent to which their own private information or data is shared or withheld during a research project in which they participate. It is also HARRC’s responsibility to ensure that researchers are maintaining these agreements with their research subjects. Thus, HARRC requires that an accurate explanation of these matters be a part of every informed consent form. With this in mind, we suggest that researchers consult the definition of [anonymity] and [confidentiality] before using these terms on their informed consent forms. Generally speaking, when no one, not even the researchers, can identify the data or information from an individual subject (or even that the subject was a participant in the study) then the data/information is anonymous. When the researchers are able to identify an individual participant’s data or information but agree to only disseminate the data/information in a form in which individual participants will not be identifiable then the data/information is said to be confidential. When neither of these protections can be assured then the data is not anonymous or confidential. Researchers should describe on their informed consent forms the steps that will be taken to ensure anonymity or confidentiality or explain why these measures cannot be assured. Researchers should feel free to contact a member of HARRC if they need help designing their study so that data/information is kept anonymous or confidential.

5. Research Design: HARRC will not comment on the quality of your research design unless it impacts the welfare of your subjects. You need not worry that we will deny your protocol because we think the research design is poor. By the same token, however, you should not expect that student research proposals or other research protocols will receive any constructive feedback from HARRC.

6. Coercion: Potential research subjects should not be coerced into participation. While this is a fairly straightforward ethical consideration in theory, in actual practice offering exaggerated rewards for participation is unfortunately commonplace on many college campuses. It is, for example, coercion to offer a student extra credit which would amount to 5% of their final grade for a course in exchange for participation in a particular research study. Similarly, substantial monetary compensation offered to low income community members for participation in research is also coercion. The potential research subject can hardly be expected to say no in these cases and, therefore, is not considered to be participating voluntarily.