Welcome to the IRB home page
The Bates College Institutional Review
Board (IRB) has been established to approve research projects involving
the use of human participants. The IRB exists both because Bates wants
to ensure that research participants are treated with the utmost respect
and safety and because federal law requires that all federally funded
research involving human participants receive IRB approval. The research
projects concerned include not only standard research but in-class
research and service learning projects as well, and extend to journals
and photographs, video and tape recordings of participants.
The members of the IRB for 2012-2013 are: Amy Bradfield Douglass (co-chair),
Michael Sargent (co-chair), Steve Kemper, and Lavina Dhingra. Dr. Candace Walworth, MD
is the community member.
All proposals should be submitted to Amy Bradfield Douglass in hardcopy, Pettengill Hall 372. Amy Bradfield Douglass, the IRB co-chair, can be contacted at adouglas@bates.edu or by phone at (207) 786-6182.
Please note an important addition to the IRB approval
process: Effective September 2012, all researchers must
complete the National Institute of Health's
Protecting Human
Research Participants online course. As part of your
application process to the Bates IRB, you must present your certificate
of completion. The course takes approximately three hours to
complete.
Federal guidelines state that any institution receiving federal funds
for research using human participants must establish an Institutional
Review Board; all federally funded research must receive IRB approval.
"An IRB shall review and have authority to approve, require modifications in (to secure approval), or disapprove all research activities covered by this policy. An IRB may require informed consent and require documentation of informed consent. An IRB is to notify the investigator and the institution of its approval or disapproval of a research activity. If it disapproves, it will give its reasons and provide an opportunity for the investigator to respond in writing or in person. An IRB will provide periodic (usually annual) reviews of approved, long-term research activities."
Informational Flowcharts
Does my project proposal need to be submitted to the IRB? |  |
How do I submit my proposal to the IRB? | |
Downloads
Our downloads page has sample documents and the proposal checklist.