Friday, March 26, 2010

IRB approval/Secondary Research

For your response to this posting, I want you to think about two aspects of your technical report process. The first will really only pertain to some of you, but I invite all of you to say something about it. "IRB Approval" is a process that all students incorporating interviews, surveys, and observations need to complete before they proceed with the writing and completion of their technical report. Do a little looking into "IRB approval." What is it? Why do researchers need to go through the process? Who does it "protect"? Here's your second question: why do you need to incorporate, do you think, "secondary research" into your technical report? Why, as far as you can tell, does this research need to come from predominantly "peer reviewed" sources? I look forward to reading your responses!

13 comments:

  1. It is important to include secondary research in your report because it gives validity to your findings, if you have no frame of reference from what other people have done you don't know if you are on track or if you are completely wrong. It is important for this information to be peer reviewed so you know that they are not in the same situation you are in, knowing if your research is valid or not.

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  2. IRB (Institutional Review Board) protects the general public (the students) from potentially unethical human research.

    Secondary research helps support primary research by showing that other peers have done research in similar fields. Secondary research diversifies the writing and shows that the author is well-read in their field.

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  3. Internal review Board (IRB) approval is needed to keep track of information flow in large companies or institutions. Secondary research is needed to support what you are saying is valid and your findings are accurate, not just some self generated data.

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  4. IRB approval refers to the Institutional Review Board, which reviews any biological or biomedical research that involves humans. Researchers need to go through this in order to determine if their research is humane, scientific and properly regulated. This protects all subjects that might have participated in the research.
    Secondary research is a summary or collection of data from existing research. It would need to come from "peer reviewed" source in order to validate that particular source for use in the report.

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  5. The internal Review Board (IRB) is an organization that makes sure that all human test subjects are being treated humanely. IRB approval means that your project does not infringe on the rights of your test subjects in any way. Researchers have to go through this process to make sure their project does not harm the test subjects.
    Secondary research is needed because it gives your document some substance. The Public at large is less likely to doubt the finding of your research if you have several sources that say the same thing. The research needs to come from peer reviewed sources because this will ensure that information is accurate.

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  6. IRB approval is the process that any researcher must go through when dealing with people. It is in place to ensure that the procedures the researcher is using are ethically acceptable. It protects the researcher and the institute the researcher is working for.

    Secondary Research is important because it shows other related research that has already been done in the field. It is useful to cite secondary research in your report because it relates to what you are researching. It helps to create a background for your research and explain why your research is relevant and different from what has been done before. Peer reviewed sources are the best places to find secondary research because it shows that the previous research is legit and has been reviewed by other people who are knowledgeable in the field.

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  7. Insititutional Review Boards (IRB) are responsible for approving or rejecting clinical research on humans. Federal regulations govern this process, and IRB approval is required for federal funding of this type of research. IRBs were introduced because to protect research subjects from abuses by the researchers.

    Secondary research can be useful for validating the importance of your primary research as well as to support the claims presented by your research. Secondary research that has been reviewed by the subject matter experts further strengthens its validity.

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  8. IRB refers to Institutional Review Board, also known as ethical review board (ERB) or independent ethics committee (IEC). It more or less safeguards the rights and welfare of research/test subjects by mostly approving, monitoring, and reviewing scientific research involving human subjects.

    Secondary research is useful primarily as sources of credible backing to your primary research and results. Though non-peer-reviewed sources may be used, they have nowhere near as much credibility as peer-reviewed sources.

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  9. Secondary research is a crucial part of any technical report. It provides the reader with a credible source of information concerning your report. Without secondary research, the report is just data and observations done by the person writing the report. The use of a credible source makes the report more relevant.

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  10. Secondary research is an important aspect of a technical report because it provides information on the subject matter other than the research and knowledge given by the author. The author can quote other persons studies and results as supplement to their own research.

    It is also important to be sure that the secondary sources are peer reviewed technical documents from a published technical journal. This ensures that any secondary data used is valid and comes from a reliable source.

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  11. IRB refers to the Institutional Review Board. It is a standard way of keeping track of studies that involve human input. The purpose of it is to make sure that the people involved have protection of their rights and welfare.

    Secondary research is crucial to research because it gives background to the actual research being done. Secondary research needs to come from peer reviewed articles because this makes sure that the information found and information used is fact and not opinion.

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  12. Secondary research provides both launching points and reference points to primary research.

    It would be silly to start from square one every time a scientific study is done. Instead a scientist can read what peer reviewed journals and expand the knowledge of the community as a whole.

    Secondary sources can also bolster the results of primary research.

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  13. I'm not familiar with IRB approval so I did a search on Wikipedia. According to it, IRB approval is used to protect human subjects of research. Typically, it's used for biomedical research to make sure that the subjects are not being harmed. The article specifies ethics violations in the 20th century as the catalyst for the creation of IRB. It specifically cites Nazi medical experimentation and the Tuskegee Syphilis study but the first thing I thought of was the Harvard Prison Study.

    For the second question, I believe secondary research is important to backup claims that we make in our papers. It also shows that we've looked into our field of study to see how others have handled similar research. For instance, I'm working on a research project covering Radio Interferometry. We're no the first group to try it, it has a history of use about fifty years old. That's a lot of material to learn from.

    I believe that science is a collaborative process; by not checking how scientists of the past performed experiments, we woudl be wasting their effort.

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