C14 - IRB Guidance on Data-Sharing in the Social Sciences: Evidence of a Shift

SESSION NOTE: This session is pre-recorded and will be offered on-demand starting December 12. For those wishing to further discuss the topic with the speakers and/or ask questions, a LIVE Q&A session will be available on December 13 from 12:45-1:30 PM ET. Join Q&A session here.

This session will present the results of an empirical investigation of the language used in general guidelines and consent script templates from IRBs at 50 major research universities in the United States, which documented an observable shift in attention to this topic from IRBs in the past five years, and discuss recommendations for consent language and general data management advice that individual IRBs might consider adopting in their own guidance revisions. In the social sciences, a tension persists between two scholarly imperatives advanced by federal funding organizations, disciplinary associations, and publishers alike: the longstanding mandate to treat research participants with respect and to minimize the potential risks of participating in research, and the newer expectations of providing access to the results of that research, including data generated through interaction with human participants. While IRBs tend to focus on the first concern, their decisions and practices, especially the guidance they offer researchers, directly impact research transparency possibilities. With more examples of appropriate data-sharing (enabled by informed consent scripts directly asking for data-sharing agreement and socio-technical innovations professional repositories offer) on hand, IRB personnel can continue to expand these possibilities and assist in reducing the tension described above.