Landy,

I found your message interesting. Our IRB worries about survey fatigue with our students, but in practice only asks investigators to examine their reasons for targeting our students. Convenience is obviously a driving factor, but should not be the overriding one. The IRB poses the question, “would the study be improved by broadening the subject pool?”  When you refer to surveys from Student Affairs, is this research for generalizable knowledge? In some cases, the IRB wouldn’t need to review it because it would be for institutional purposes only, not generalizable.

I think your processes concerning email  lists are similar to ours.

Dawn

Dawn Underwood, PhD
Director, Office of Sponsored Programs
IRB Administrator
Holmstedt Hall 272
Indiana State University
620 Chestnut Street
Terre Haute, IN 47809
xxxxxx@indstate.edu

Ph: 812-237-3088
Fax: 812-237-3092

-----Original Message-----
From: Research Administration List [mailto:xxxxxx@lists.healthresearch.org] On Behalf Of Johnson, Landy (Director of Grant Development)
Sent: Friday, January 25, 2013 11:23 AM
To: xxxxxx@lists.healthresearch.org
Subject: [RESADM-L] IRB and Student E-mail

Recently our IRB was asked to limit the extent to which PIs can e-mail students for surveys, because of a concern about survey fatigue.  There are lots of surveys for Student Affairs that come through our IRB, and it appears the administration wants to prioritize those over faculty research or student research.  The IRB chair believes it is not the role of the IRB to police the use of mailing lists.  Do others have policies or practices for their IRBs concerning similar restrictions?  We are wondering what other schools do about this.

Note that when PIs from other institutions want to use our students as research subjects, we do not provide student e-mail addresses.  We direct the PI to advertise on our Portal, providing a link where students can opt in.  Internally, our faculty and students do the same thing, but administrators are able to e-mail all the students, blast-style, and sometimes PIs are able to get an OK from an administrator to use the blast e-mails.

Landy

----------------------------
Landy C. Johnson, MPA, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Economics and Geography Director of Grant Development Assumption College Provost Suite
500 Salisbury St., Worcester, MA 01609-1296
508-767-7666
xxxxxx@assumption.edu

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