Class Projects With Living People

What steps must anthropology professors take when they plan on having students in one of their regular courses do a project that entails research with living people?

Planning ahead is very important. It may take 1-2 months for you to go through the research protocol review process.
Determine the Applicability of Protocol Review Procedures for Research Involving Human Participants.
- That means you need to go to this CofC Web Site, and work with the flow chart you find there.
- Work through the flow chart.
- It may be helpful if you consult with someone from the Office of Research and Grants Administration to determine if the research you're having your students do:
- is exempt from review
- requires an expedited review, or
- requires a full review

Let's suppose you determine that your proposed class research project requires an expedited review. I made that determination when I proposed my Comparative Social Organization students undertake a life history project. Click this link to view a ".pdf" file I created. It contains a number of items associated with the approval process I went through with CofC's IRB (Institutional Review Board). They include:

A form the IRB uses to notify professors of their approval of research.
"The Human Research Review Application" I filled out, including typed answers to "Questions 11-20" of the application.
The project instructions I planned on giving to 201 students.
An "AAA Briefing Paper on Informed Consent" which I had students read and discuss before they undertook research. This is optional but a good idea.

The forms I completed are found at this link. Look for the forms near the middle of the page.

I also participated in Investigator Training in Human Subject Protection. The link for this page is under IRB Training, at the top right of this page. I opted to do a ninety-minute, Web-Based Tutorial. I could have chosen to fulfill this education requirement by watching a video.A year after my students did this class project, I had an obligation to report back to CofC's IRB. Since I plan on having students in my ANTH 201 course do this project every year for the foreseeable future, I submitted a research protocol modification form to the IRB. The modification I was making was enrolling another set of research subjects, i.e., the people students will interview this year. I completed a research protocol modification form and submitted a typed description of the modification.