Day for Night: Facilitating Collaborative Solutions in the Pursuit of Approval for Human Subjects Research

For first-time researchers, the prospect of executing a Master’s thesis can be as exciting as it is daunting. Students pursuing skill sets in the helping professions may view their thesis not just as a way to contribute to their field of study and do something that will be helpful to society, but also as a way of contributing to treatment agencies that allow fledgling researchers access to human subjects. Unfortunately, good intentions, energy, and a positive outlook may not be enough to bring an idea for research to fruition. One need only begin the process of seeking Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval for the use of human subjects and other necessary approvals to uncover the dizzying necessity for coordination among many parties that must be in place for a study of any complexity to be executed. Just as a clock seems simple at a glance but reveals, upon further scrutiny, an engineer’s masterful efforts at integrating many moving parts and principles, so does the thesis study seem a natural and simple thing before the apprentice researcher uncovers the many principles and moving parts that must collaborate and work together harmoniously to create the illusion of effortlessness. Though difficult to navigate at times, the IRB process is absolutely necessary as evidenced by studies that predated the IRB and were infamously harmful to participants such as the Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) and the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment. This paper discusses the lessons learned by two student researchers in their efforts at such collaboration. It is written in hopes of identifying the unanticipated barriers that might keep other students from hearing that satisfying and deceptively simple ticking as they aspire to make a contribution of their own.