Procedures of the Alvernia University Institutional Review Board
Alvernia University (AU) encourages and supports the scholarly endeavors of its faculty, staff, and students. This pursuit of scholarship will often include human participants for data collection and analysis. The AU Institutional Review Board (IRB) reviews human participant research applications to ensure that the rights and welfare of those participants are protected; that risks have been considered and minimized; that the potential for benefit has been identified and maximized; that all human participants only volunteer after being provided with legally effective informed consent; and that any research is conducted in an ethical manner and in compliance with established standards.
These policies apply to all human participant research conducted at AU. Individuals seeking to conduct human participant research may not recruit participants or begin data collection until they have obtained approval by the AU IRB. All human participant research must go through a review process using the Research Determination Tool, which may require further review by the AU IRB. Typically, usual educational work done as part of a course, course evaluation procedures for program improvement, and surveys or interviews that do not identify the participants generally qualify as Exempt.
