A guest writer

 Doctoral student, Meredith Baker-Rush has been going through the IRB process with multiple stakeholders. She shares today some of her hard-earned lessons. 

The hours of pain staking reading and writing the proposal are stressful and demanding, yet at some point you will complete a wonderful proposal, “pass” the oral defense, and IRB process. You will hear the magical words “data collection” and you want to cry tears of joy! I am sure you have the idea that data collection is a huge step in the process. You think that after all the struggles, all will move smoothly and quickly. Well, I am writing to share my lessons learned so far in efforts to help others move quickly and effectively in this process.  

• If you are using other stakeholders for your participant pool(s), be sure to investigate their IRB process, documents, and demands well in advance. Do not wait for the surprise demands that stall your study.
• Keep a separate binder for any change of procedure submissions and all approval letters/emails related to each request.
• Stay organized with all the changes. Keep a log of the updated drafts of ALL aspects of the study. (This is a huge challenge when you have more than one stakeholder!)
• Stay on top of participant recruitment. Days turn quickly to weeks. Time is of the essence. Do not be passive in your recruitment.
• Look at the data as it does come in. Check that the study is “happening” as described in the proposal. If new things are noted, make notes.
• Keep a journal of your thoughts and ideas, observations, and struggles.
• Keep open lines of communication with your chair. CC them in the communications with Stakeholders as your chair suggests. If you have a question about a stakeholders request, check with your chair and confirm the suggested change is appropriate and reasonable PRIOR to doing the change.

I must admit that these words of wisdom are easy to type out and very difficult to follow. I have been making a consistent effort to do each of these steps in efforts to stay on top of things. It is sometimes harder than the proposal stage. I have learned a lot in the past two months regarding patience and organization from a very different perspective. Please learn from me and let my hard lessons learned be little golden nuggets of wisdom that will help propel you through the process. Best of luck on your dissertation journey. 

Next time I will discuss dealing with obstacles. Do you have an issue or a question that you would like me to discuss in a future post? Would you like to be a guest writer? Send me your ideas! leann.stadtlander@waldenu.edu