The Contribution of Ethics Review to Protection of Human Participants: Comment on “Measuring the Quality and Performance of Institutional Review Boards”
Restricted accessResearch articleFirst published online July, 2019
The Contribution of Ethics Review to Protection of Human Participants: Comment on “Measuring the Quality and Performance of Institutional Review Boards”
Measuring the quality and performance of IRBs requires clarity about what IRBs are supposed to do. Although many agree that IRBs are supposed to protect the rights and welfare of human subjects, exactly how review by an IRB contributes to protection is not always clear. Originally, ethics review was instituted as a way to check the interests, possible conflicts, and enthusiasm of investigators whose relationship to participants is different from physicians’ relationship to patients. IRB performance might include evaluating how well IRBs do this.
ColemanC.BouesseauM. C. (2008). How do we know that research ethics committees are really working? The neglected role of outcomes assessment in research ethics review. BMC Medical Ethics, 9(1), Article 6.
2.
GradyC. (2010). Do IRBs protect human research participants?Journal of the American Medical Association, 304, 1122-1123.
3.
Institute of Medicine. (2001). Preserving public trust: Accreditation and human research participant protection programs. Washington DC: National Academies Press. Retrieved from https://www.nap.edu/read/10085/chapter/1
4.
LynchH. F.NichollsS. G.MeyerM. N.TaylorH. A. (2019). Of parachutes and participant protection: Moving beyond quality to advance effective research ethics oversight. Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics, 14(3), 190-196. doi:10.1177/1556264618812625
5.
McCarthyC. (2008). The origins and policies that govern institutional review boards. In EmanuelE.GradyC.CrouchR.LieR.MillerF.WendlerD. (Eds.), The Oxford textbook of clinical research ethics (pp. 541-550). New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
6.
NichollsS. G.HayesT. P.BrehautJ. C.McDonaldM.WeijerC.SaginurR.FergussonD. (2015). A scoping review of empirical research related to quality and effectiveness of research ethics review. PLoS ONE, 10(7), e0133639.
7.
TaylorH. (2007). Moving beyond compliance: Measuring ethical quality to enhance the oversight of human subjects research. IRB: Ethics and Human Research, 20(5), 9-14.
8.
TsanM. F. (2019). Measuring the quality and performance of institutional review boards. Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics, 14(3), 187-189. doi: 10.1177/1556264618804686
