Blog Series on Institutional Review Board (IRB) Considerations in Informal Science Education Settings

These blog posts were written by researcher Andee Rubin in 2013 & 2014 as a way to provide technical assistance to investigators planning to carry out research in informal settings. The first post provides a history of human subjects protection as it emerged from medical research and thoughts about the application of these principles to informal settings. The second discusses the set of federally-mandated rules that Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) use to protect human subjects and describes how and when researchers need to seek IRB approval for their work. The third describes techniques for limiting risk to participants, even in the case that the research involves video- or audio-taping. The fourth provides a set of resources, including sample IRB applications, sample consent forms, and a list of IRB organizations recommended by the Informal STEM education (ISE) community.

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