Читать книгу Social Work Research Methods - Reginald O. York - Страница 106

There are several major principles that the IRB will employ to evaluate a given proposal to determine if it should be approved. The Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative provides online courses on the use of human subjects in research. In this training is information about the history of IRB reviews of proposals for the use of human subjects for research. According to the Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative (n.d.), the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects in Biomedical and Behavioral Research met in 1979 and prepared the Belmont Report. This report identifies three basic principles that underlie all human subject research:

1 Respect for persons

2 Beneficence

3 Justice

The principle of respect deals with autonomy and self-determination. People should be allowed to choose for themselves the risk they wish to undertake. Study subjects have full autonomy when they can understand the risks involved and have the freedom to volunteer without coercion.

The principle of beneficence requires that we minimize harm and maximize benefits. Risk assessment is a key theme. The principle of justice requires us to design research that does not unduly target its risks to certain groups of people and fails to treat different types of people equably or fairly. If you plan to collect data from people in prisons, you can expect the IRB to give your proposal a full review because of the vulnerable nature of the prison experience. If your study is about prison life, you will probably be okay with that because the class of people who are the participants is the same as the class of people who will benefit from the results.