Meet Sierra Verbockel, BS, MPA, who'll be covering the 2019 Social, Behavioral, and Educational Research and Advancing Ethical Research Conferences (SBER19/AER19) as a member of the Blog Squad. Members of PRIM&R's Conference Blog Squad provide an insider's view of the conferences by sharing their experience before, during, and after the meeting. Read more
In August, the RAND Corporation, a policy research organization, released the first comprehensive profile of IRB demographics and function in 20 years: a “Profile of Institutional Review Board Characteristics Prior to the 2019 Implementation of the Revised Common Rule.” The report investigates questions about IRB practices, efficiency, and effectiveness on the cusp of implementation of the revised federal regulations, including single IRB review. (In December of 2017, PRIM&R helped get the word out to potential survey respondents.) Read more
The International Conference of Harmonization (ICH), which is made up of the regulatory bodies and pharmaceutical trade associations of key drug developing countries, recently released their revised “E8(R1) General Considerations for Clinical Studies” document. On September 16, PRIM&R submitted comments approving of ICH’s work to modernize their guidelines and suggesting that the document could benefit from a better discussion of the broad ethical principles that underlie many of the human subject protections the document details. We also recommend that the ICH consider reorganizing some of its guidelines to make it easier for those designing and conducting research to learn more about these fundamental ethical principles and related best practices. If you are based in the United States, we encourage you to consider submitting your own comments on the newly revised E8 document before the September 30 deadline. You are welcome to cite or quote PRIM&R’s comments. Read more
Some of the most significant changes in the revised Common Rule involve the provisions around informed consent, including the new requirement that informed consent begin with a “concise and focused presentation of key information that is most likely to assist a prospective subject or legally authorized representative in understanding the reasons why one might or might not want to participate in the research” [46.116(a)(5)(i)]—the “key information requirement,” for short. I welcome the key information requirement and think it has the potential to greatly improve informed consent, but it is bringing with it several complexities. Read more
Enthusiasm for data sharing and research transparency has grown across the social sciences. This newer scholarly imperative has begun to overlap with the long-standing mandate to minimize risks for human subjects in research. IRBs play a crucial role in this realm, as the IRB’s recommendations on a social science research protocol will often determine whether or not the data obtained through the study may be shared in the future. IRBs are tasked with assisting and educating social scientists to include the appropriate elements, language, and procedures in their protocol materials in order for researchers to approach data sharing in an ethical and responsible manner. Read more
