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IRB Considerations

IRB Considerations

Owned by Harmony Jankowski, created
Last updated: Jun 03, 2024
2 min read

 Wondering how to get started?

In general, most research studies require approval by an Internal Review Board (IRB), and to obtain that approval, you will need to write an IRB protocol, which will include an Informed Consent statement.

While these will be tailored to each individual study and for each institution, we’ve provided samples of both documents:

A note about informed consent in Terracotta:

If you select “Students will be invited to consent” from among the participation options, Terracotta will create an informed consent assignment, which will ask students whether or not they choose to participate in your experiment.

IRBs generally expect that, in routine experimental research, if someone wants to participate, they provide affirmative consent. And if they don't, then they just walk away. In most situations, it would be weird to ask a research participant to register that they do not provide consent, because then you'd be keeping identifiable records about people who did not agree to participate.

This context is more complicated, though, as both a research and education setting. Here’s why a decline-to-consent option is important here:

  • The decline to consent button enables a student to withdraw consent after having provided consent. In education settings, a student can't simply stop participating, because they would become noncompliant with course requirements.  In Terracotta, a student can withdraw consent by resubmitting the consent assignment and selecting "I do not agree to participate."

  • Terracotta is designed to administer consent in a Canvas