What is IRB Approval in a Doctorate Program?

Under Federal regulations and University policy, all researchers who conduct research—including those completing master’s theses and doctoral dissertations or final projects—that involves human subjects or materials of human origin must apply to the Institutional Review Board (IRB), which reviews all research protocols on behalf of Liberty University’s Research Ethics/IRB Office.

Approval of the research protocol must be in place before the researcher begins data collection. If you do not receive IRB approval for your project prior to beginning data collection, and keep your approval current during the entire time that you collect and analyze data, your project may not receive approval by the university. Similarly, many academic journals will not publish research conducted without IRB approval.

Here are examples of the kinds of research requiring IRB approval:

Interviews, telephone, or mail surveys
Behavioral or educational testing
Observation of individual or group behavior
Collection of blood (or other biological) samples
Study of existing data, documents, and archives on databases

Case studies involving only one subject are not considered to be systematic investigations and thus do not require IRB approval.

The IRB requires that there be a faculty sponsor for student-led research and that the faculty sponsor be listed as the Principal Investigator (PI) on the project, even if the student is conducting the research. Both the student and the faculty sponsor must have completed the Human Subjects Protection tutorial and test and CITI training.

Important: You must send your application to your faculty sponsor for review before submitting it to the IRB.

IRB approval is a long process at Liberty University

As many of my rabid readers know, I have been enrolled in the Doctorate of Strategic Leadership program at Liberty University since the fall term of 2020. It took me a couple of years to get through the course work and I finally started my project coursework in the summer of 2023. I had to re-take 887 and 888 twice, mostly due to my time constraints but I was warned all along that the IRB process can be excruciatingly long.

By the beginning of the summer term in 2024 I was at Task 12 and ready to submit. I filled out the application on June 3 and finally got IRB approval on August 1. Almost two full months later.

What I learned during the IRB Process at Liberty University

Firstly, it takes a healthy dose of tenacity, perseverance, and gut-wrenching patience to get through the process. Well… at least for me.

Before you submit your application you have to make sure that your Section 1 and Section 2 of the study are in top-notch shape and that includes your interview questions, recruitment letters, and consent forms.

When you log into Cayuse IRB to apply it will most likely give you an error and you will have to email the IRB for access and they will “grant permission” in a day or two.

I highly suggest reading ALL of the documentation on the IRB site and following it to a T. I can not stress enough that you need to use their templates exactly, do not deviate, even one word.

The odd thing about IRB is it is supposed to protect your research subjects BEFORE you begin research but you have to find, contact, and gain approval from a company/organization before you fill out your app. This seems back to me. But oh well.

After much trial and tribulation, I finally found a firm that agreed to work with me in the middle of May. We spoke on the phone twice and I told them, very matter-of-factly “I have no idea when this will be approved so hopefully you will be patient. It might be next week, six months, or who knows, next year before we speak again.” They agreed (more on that later).

I filled out the app, mainly using the info from my working document and the templates they provided. It was pretty in-depth.

I hit submit and then waited, more than I week. To my surprise when I went in and checked my application for the first time I found out that my chair did not “certify” the app and that took a couple of more days after I contacted her. Note: you (the primary investigator) and your chair must certify the app after every submission.

Six weeks later and no approval from IRB

In the project phase of the DSL at Liberty University we have to do an update every Sunday as a discussion board post. Mostly it contains your progress for the past week and what you plan on working on the next. On the sixth week, I was getting pretty fed up that I had not heard anything back from the IRB and made it known in my post.

Early that following Monday morning, my chair sent me an email and asked me to reach out to the IRB and ask for an update. I did so and so did she in a very poignant email. I mentioned in my email that my chosen organization was getting a little antsy because here in Alaska a lot of companies are on a two-season cycle. They are either very busy in the summer or the winter. We were coming up on summer quick.

Almost immediately, one of the reviewers emailed back and said his initial review was complete.

I logged in and there were more than 20 edits to the application and the attachments!

The reviewer also said, “It would have been nice to know if there were any hard deadlines at the time of the application.”

Are you kidding me? It has already been more than a month and a half.

There were so many edits that it made my head spin. It looked like a three-year-old got a hold of a box of crayons and scribbled all over my documents.

I have been around the block a few times in my life I have never been strung along like this.

At the time my wife and I were traveling in northern Minnesota and I did all of these edits in a hotel room with sketchy internet.

My chair was firmly on my side at this point and sent another email asking the reviewer when a decision would be made as time was of the essence.

The reviewer sent back a reply quickly saying that if I followed the suggestions it should not be more than a week.

Sure enough, almost a week goes by, and another round of TWELVE edits.

These mainly had to do with transferring over my consent forms to an online form versus a sign-in-person form since I noted in one of the previous rounds of edits that I would be doing only virtual interviews.

I made those edits and waited again.

Finally, on August 1, I woke up to a text from my chair saying that I had IRB approval and I logged on to find the elusive letter.

Attached is a copy of it and guess what, I am exempt from any further IRB approval.

I don’t know what the formal role of the IRB is but it should not be the grammar police.

IRB approval, now what?

In the DSL program, IRB approval is only half of the battle. To move on to Task 13, the data collection phase, you have to have the chair and then admin approval for Task 12 (3 parts to that task).

To get that you must submit your work document (Sections 1 and 2), a PowerPoint of your proposal, the letter from the IRB, and a letter from your chosen organization that says, in very specific language, that they agree to work with you on the study.

Well, guess what, we are at the end of the summer term, and if I do not get that packet in by Monday, August 5, I will have to wait until the start of the Fall term to submit.

I already knew I would have to re-take this course, 889, again. I am paying out of pocket more than $4500 just for tuition. Almost this entire term was taken up by this IRB process. A process that costs not only an enormous amount of time but several thousands of dollars.

Oh, just one more thing…I finally got a hold of the company and asked for the letter for approval. Nothing yet and its been three days. I get it, this company has no idea what we are going through or the process necessary in an academic program and I also understand that we are not the most important thing on their mind in their busy day-to-day business tasks.

I just hope that this all works out in the end.

This is my honest take on the IRB process and I hope it helps someone on their journey as well.

If you would like to learn more about my triumphs and struggles as I earn my Doctor of Strategic Leadership you can read about it here.