An author has contacted the journal enquiring about the need for institutional review board approval for a survey. The survey is not derived from a specific institution but rather out of the personal interest of the author(s) who are targeting a point of wide scientific interest. The authors have a broad reach in social media.
The topic is of significant interest to the field, and there is a high potential for publication once the data are gathered and analysed. There are no patient data involved or publicised.
Question(s) for the COPE Forum
- What is the policy on institutional review board approval for social media surveys or research?
The Forum agreed that institutional review board (IRB) approval is required for social media surveys or research. The Forum suggested that if the authors are associated with an institution, they should be using the institutional IRB for approval of the research. If researchers are gathering data about people, and social media is just a means of collecting the data, then some form of ethical oversight is needed.
The editor told the Forum that the response from the institution was that because the study did not involve an intervention on a patient, they were not responsible for oversight of the study. The Forum noted that often IRBs are only interested in interventional research, and they will not consider survey, qualitative or quality improvement research as part of their remit. In the USA, the American Association for Public Opinion Research has information on standards, ethics and suggested IRB forms. But ultimately, it is the university's responsibility to approve the research.
Surveys might be asking questions about people’s health, sexual orientation or criminality, for example, and the survey could involve vulnerable groups. An IRB would be concerned about these aspects and so the survey would clearly require ethical review in these circumstances. Most universities have a distinction in terms of light touch versus heavy touch institutional review, where the IRB might review the research questions, who the researchers are talking to, is private information being requested, are the individuals identifiable? Interacting with people online could also be considered an intervention and hence ethical approval would be required.
The authors ultimately decided to file for institutional review board approval at their institution and this was granted for the social media survey.
Comments
May I ask that the jurisdiction is not redacted from this example and that advice is not over-generalised from a few jurisdictions?
In most countries, there is no national requirement for review of social research that does not involve health-related data; in many cases, institutions do not exist to deliver such a review. If journals require review of such research, at best they are requiring social research to go through review processes that are not fit for purpose, lack expertise and might over time seriously distort the conduct of quite conventional social research. At worst, journals will not be able to publish articles from most of the Global South and many countries of the Global North.
Once you look at individual countries, it's complex (and the differences are fascinating). For example, Denmark does not require review of social research; Australia does, but only for researchers in institutions that receive funding from the major research councils; in other countries, like South Africa, the ambit of health regulations has been contested by social scientists, and so on... See https://www.hhs.gov/ohrp/international/social-behavioral-research-standards/index.html for some indication of the extent of social research ethics review.
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