IRB Quiz
Questions: 15 · 10 minutes
1. Which planned final product best describes the project's current intent?
An internal operational note documenting a decision for the local team.
A local report that describes what happened without developing broader claims.
A report for local use that also compares the findings with wider practice or evidence.
A scholarly or public analysis designed to contribute a broadly relevant conclusion, model, or method.
2. What is the primary purpose of producing findings from this project?
To generate conclusions intended to inform a broader population, practice, or body of knowledge.
To understand one local experience and preserve a useful record of it.
To make a specific internal operational decision, without drawing conclusions beyond it.
To improve a local program while also identifying lessons that could apply in similar settings.
3. Before data collection begins, what analysis approach is in place?
We know the general type of summary we may use, but details will be chosen after seeing the information.
An analysis plan connects defined variables, observations, or themes to the project question.
We have identified the main information to examine and a broad method for comparing or organizing it.
No analysis is intended beyond ordinary case review or informal discussion.
4. A clinic tests a new appointment-reminder process. Which question most closely matches your project's intended scope?
Did missed appointments decrease here enough to keep the new process?
What did our staff and patients experience while using this process?
Which mechanisms explain when reminder strategies influence attendance across different clinics?
Did the process work here, and what features might be useful to comparable clinics?
5. How will information be collected across participants, records, or observations?
Staff will use a shared core procedure while making documented adaptations when circumstances require them.
Information will arise through ordinary service activities and may be discussed informally afterward.
A predefined protocol will specify the same core measures and collection steps for each eligible case.
Staff will decide what to ask or record case by case, using a few common prompts as guidance.
6. At the outset, how clearly is the question your project will investigate defined?
We have a focused question, although it may be refined as early information appears.
We are gathering impressions around a broad topic without a fixed investigative question.
We have a predefined question or hypothesis that directs what information we collect.
The activity supports routine operations or conversation rather than investigating a question.
7. If the immediate local problem disappeared halfway through the project, what would most likely happen?
The activity would probably end because its sole purpose was resolving that operational problem.
We might finish documenting the local experience, but no broader question would remain.
We would reassess the local need while preserving parts that may inform similar settings.
The central investigation would remain relevant because it addresses a question beyond the immediate problem.
8. Suppose more people or records are available than your team can include. How would selections be made?
The project has eligibility rules plus a predefined recruitment or sampling method.
Available cases would be included when convenient, without formal eligibility rules.
There is no investigative sample; the team is only considering routine feedback encountered during normal work.
Eligibility rules are defined, but available cases would be enrolled or reviewed as they appear.
9. If another team later asked exactly how the project was conducted, what documentation would exist?
A protocol, dated procedures, data definitions, and records of planned changes would describe the investigation.
Team members could describe the general activity from memory, but there would be little procedural documentation.
Routine operational records would exist, but no separate investigative process would need to be reconstructed.
Written procedures and key decisions would be available, although some steps would remain locally flexible.
10. If the project involves observation, what setting and recording method are planned?
Only crowd totals or environmental conditions in public places would be recorded.
Public behavior would be described without interaction, recordings, or identifying details.
Individual behavior would be recorded in a setting where people may reasonably expect privacy, but identifiers would be removed.
Identifiable audio, video, or detailed observations would be collected where people reasonably expect privacy.
11. If biological specimens are involved, how would they reach the research team?
Only published aggregate results from specimen analyses would be used.
Specimens would be nonidentifiable to the team, with no accessible code or key.
Specimens would be coded, while a collaborating source retained a link to individual identities.
Specimens would carry identifiers or a code the research team could use to ascertain the individuals.
12. Which activity best describes how the project obtains information?
The team uses publicly available aggregate statistics without examining individual cases.
Researchers interview, survey, or otherwise communicate with living individuals to collect information.
The team observes public activity without interacting or recording readily identifiable details.
Researchers assign an intervention or deliberately change participants' environment to measure a response.
13. How would potential participants first become connected with the project?
No people would be recruited because the project uses only public aggregate material.
An organization would display a general notice, without giving the team names of potential participants.
Interested people would contact the team, which would answer questions and collect study information from volunteers.
The team would directly approach named individuals selected using private records or eligibility information.
14. A partner organization offers records for analysis. What would your research team receive?
A public summary containing only totals for groups.
Row-level data stripped of identifiers, with no key or reasonable way for the team to recover identities.
Coded private records whose key is retained by a collaborator under access restrictions.
Records containing direct identifiers or details that let the team readily ascertain identities.
15. How does the team expect readers to use the conclusions?
As evidence or concepts that can be examined and applied beyond the original organization.
As background that may interest others, without claims that the findings transfer.
Primarily to take a defined action within the original program or organization.
To guide the local decision and offer cautious implications for similar programs.