I agree that your findings are very useful, and I ...

2012-01-18T16:07:36.298-05:00

I agree that your findings are very useful, and I hope that linguists will use them to show that IRBs are out of step. Our disagreement is whether a system that fails 28% of the time is "working."

Your summary of my article is quite misleading. Th...

2012-01-18T16:03:21.532-05:00

Your summary of my article is quite misleading. The point is that the vast majority of the problems were clearly concentrated in two or three quite specific areas: 1) mandated data destruction; 2) inappropriately legalistic consent forms; and 3) written consent forms for working with participants who do not read and write. Part of the purpose of the article was to give linguists (particularly fieldworkers) resources to quote when preparing IRB applications so that it's clear that (1) is a totally inappropriate way to treat linguistic data; and that (2) and (3) are harmful to research participants.

The number of people who curtailed or abandoned projects because of IRB review was 3/94 - and two of those were curtailed because they assumed that it would be too much trouble to fill out the paperwork for working with children. But given that their protocols were already classed as non-exempt, there's no indication that this assumption was correct.

Many of the revisions were protocol clarification questions. A number of researchers also reported that their IRB did not require further modification to protocols once procedures had been clarified (I cannot recall how many mentioned this but I can check the original responses if you really want to know).

If I was tolerant of a system that intimidates participants and diminishes knowledge, I wouldn't be taking time out of my other research activities to help linguists deal with their IRBs. Showing that the clear majority of linguists following standard protocols for linguistic field research get their protocols approved is very useful: it provides linguists working with IRBs who don't do that with a way to show who's out of step, along with information about why field linguists work the way they do and how it protects research participants.

Comments on Institutional Review Blog: Survey: 28% of Linguists Report Inappropriate IRB ...

I agree that your findings are very useful, and I ...

Your summary of my article is quite misleading. Th...