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Institutional Review of Research Studies
Section 5.I – Institutional Review of Research Studies
Vance-Granville Community College (VGCC) reviews both internal and external requests for research studies involving VGCC human subjects (students, faculty, and/or staff). Research requests are coordinated by the Office of Research and Planning to evaluate all requests for research studies involving VGCC human subjects while ensuring the following:
- The welfare and rights of human subjects are adequately protected and informed consent given, if necessary
- Human subjects are not placed at unreasonable physical, mental, or emotional risk as a result of the research
- The necessity and importance of the research outweighs the risks to the subjects; and
- The researcher(s) is/are qualified to conduct research involving human subject
- The research may be approved, require modifications, or be disapproved
Studies with human subjects include the following:
- You are conducting a pilot study or other preliminary studies
- You have designed a study to collect information in a systematic way to answer a
research question
And you must be:
- Interacting with living human subjects in order to gather data about them, using methods such as interviews, focus groups, questionnaires, and participant observation, or
- Conducting experiments and manipulation of the human subjects or subjects’ environment, or
- Observing or recording private behavior (behavior that is reasonably not portrayed in an non-private environment), or
- Obtaining private identifiable information that has been collected about or provided by individuals, such as school records or identifiable information collected by another researcher or organization.
(approved July 16, 2018)
Procedures
Prior to initiating a study with human subjects, the researcher must have written approval of the proposal and study protocol from the host institution and Vance-Granville Community College’s Institutional Review Committee