Committee Members
Chair: Barak Mendelsohn
Faculty Representative: Jennifer Lilgendahl
Faculty Representative: Jonathan Wilson
Staff Representative: Natalie Wareham
Non-Affiliated Member: Deborah Cousins
Human Protection Administrator: Benjamin Le
- By regulation, "research" for IRB purposes is defined as "a systematic investigation, including research development, testing and/or evaluation designed to contribute to generalizable knowledge". Here, "generalizable" implies that the study is meant to expand the knowledge base of a scholarly field of study. For example, if the results might be published or presented to others in a discipline, the study is likely to count as research for IRB purposes; if they only serve purposes internal to Haverford, it may well not.
- IRB approval is required for research performed by employees and students of the College, and to research by outside individuals or groups involving Haverford students or taking place on its campus.
Certain categories of human subjects research (for instance: non-sensitive and anonymous surveys and some pedagogical research) are exempt from the federal human subjects research regulations. Those wishing to undertake such exempt research should still obtain confirmation of the exempt status by filling out and submitting the Exemption Request Form (use the link to the right).
A faculty or staff member wishing to initiate research involving human subjects must submit a detailed proposal describing the research. Haverford students must prepare a proposal jointly with a sponsoring faculty member. Investigators must complete the CITI "Human Subjects Research" course at http://citiprogram.org or receive equivalent training. Instructions for accessing CITI training can be found in Documents section above.
A proposal application form may be downloaded using the link on the right-hand side column. All submissions or re-submissions of IRB proposals or exemption requests should be sent to hc-irb [at] haverford.edu as a single electronic file in .pdf format. The proposal form may be "printed" as a pdf file (on Windows this requires installation of Adobe Acrobat). Appendices may be added to the pdf file using Adobe Acrobat or Macintosh Preview. If revisions are required, proposers should send a new file containing the complete revised proposal and in the cover letter (email) note which pages have been changed relative to the original.
The IRB usually is able to reach a decision on a proposal within 2 or 3 weeks (4 to 6 weeks during the summer). More details of IRB operations and criteria for reviewing proposals are given in the IRB procedures document, available for download to the right. Also included is a link to a checklist that may be useful both to proposers and IRB members.