Eve Tuck, a member of the PAR Collective at the CUNY Graduate Center, describes her experience in seeking IRB approval for a Participatory Action Research Project:

IRB questions are among the most frequent questions I hear from folks interested in doing participatory action research. To help shed some light, I'll share a bit about how things played out for me in my first experience of seeking IRB approval for a PAR project.

First, it is important to note that PAR work has been happening for some time at The Graduate Center, City University of New York, where I have launched my comprehensive PAR projects. This means that I have benefited from the prior relationships between my PAR predecessors and the IRB. Largely, our IRB is well informed about the political and epistemological benefits of PAR, and this is because of ongoing relationship building and mutual education between PAR researchers and IRB members.

I was advised to meet with our IRB Administrator to describe the broad strokes of the project and learn from her what potential red flags were waving along various points of my intended project. This meeting was extremely informative and productive, and I came away with a very good sense of the phrasing I would use in my IRB application.

During that conversation, I shared with her my experience of a Catch 22 in IRB approval for PAR work: I needed to have a project description and protocol in place in order to gain IRB approval to begin working with my participants/co-researchers, but, because of my approach to PAR, I could not possibly know what our research design and protocol would be until I met with my participants/co-researchers!

The IRB Administrator and I developed this solution: I would gain IRB approval in two phases. First, I would submit an IRB application for my work with the youth that would become my co-researchers. This covered our regular meetings, video-taping and audio recording, data journal keeping, stipends, risks, benefits, and the purpose: to develop and implement a PAR project that we would collaboratively design and analyze. A version of the consent form that I created for the first phase can be found below. In this first phase of IRB approval, I promised to submit an addendum that would lay out our research design and methods, protocols, and consent forms for participants in our study.

Several months later, my youth co-researchers and I submitted the addendum to our original IRB application. In this version, my youth co-researchers were listed as co-authors of the proposal. (To meet eligibility prerequisites to be listed as co-researchers, each youth researcher passed the computer-based certification on research with human subjects required by the University. We did a teach-in on the material covered by the certification test in a computer lab on campus.) This addendum provided specifics on our plans for interviews, focus groups, and an anonymous street opinion poll. An example of the consent form for interview participants over the age of 18 is included below. (We also had consent forms for focus groups participants, and assent forms for interview and focus group participants under the age of 18, which had to be accompanied by parental/guardian consent forms. Each of these forms were very similar to the sample provided below.)

In each phase of approval, the IRB panel did write back to me to ask me to make clarifications. I found this back-and-forth element to be extremely helpful because I was able to see concretely what their concerns were, and address them.

My first experience of gaining IRB approval for a PAR project was a success because the IRB Administrator and IRB members took the time to explain their concerns to me, and also took the time to listen to my goals and strategize with me how to meet them ethically. This investment was wonderfully instructive, and I have applied what I have learned in subsequent successful IRB applications for PAR projects.

SAMPLE CONSENT FORMS

Sample Consent Form for Co-Researcher

Sample Consent Form for Interview Participant