Institutional Review boards: Ethics, regulations and the research agenda

Information Science researchers and designers are well‐positioned to become active participants in scholarly and institutional conversations concerning the protection of human subjects. The overall goals of this panel are: 1) to extend the discourse within the Information Science field concerning the protection of human subjects in research; 2) to explore new ways to improve the relationship between researchers and Institutional Review Boards; and 3) to advance current Institutional Review Board policies and procedures concerning the use of iterative, culturally appropriate, qualitative methods within social science research. This panel will stimulate conversations through which “IRBs and investigators accept their common charge to meet the needs of subjects and to improve the quality of research.” (Burke, 2005, p. 921)