An Institutional Review Board (IRB) is a committee at a university or research institution that reviews proposed studies involving human participants and approves, modifies, or rejects them to make sure ethical guidelines like informed consent and confidentiality are followed.
An Institutional Review Board (IRB) is the gatekeeper of human subjects research. Before a psychologist can run a study on people, the proposal goes to the IRB, a committee that checks whether the study protects participants' rights and welfare. The board weighs the risks to participants against the potential benefits of the research, and it can approve the study, demand changes, or shut it down entirely.
In practice, the IRB is enforcing the ethical guidelines you learn in Topic 1.6. It looks for informed consent (or informed assent for minors), protection from harm, confidentiality, and a justification for any deception, including a plan to debrief participants afterward. Think of the IRB as the ethics checkpoint a study has to pass before it starts. The famous studies that horrify your textbook (think extreme stress or unjustified deception) are exactly the kind of research a modern IRB exists to prevent.
The IRB lives in Topic 1.6, Ethical Guidelines in Psychology, in Unit 1 of the revised AP Psych course. It is the institutional answer to the question "who makes sure psychologists actually follow ethical rules?" You can list guidelines like informed consent and confidentiality all day, but the IRB is the mechanism that enforces them before data collection begins. That makes it the anchor concept for any exam question about research ethics. On the revised exam, ethics shows up beyond simple definitions. The Article Analysis Question (AAQ) asks you to evaluate whether real research addressed ethical guidelines, and the IRB is the framework behind that evaluation.
Keep studying AP Psychology Unit 1
Ethical Guidelines (Unit 1)
Guidelines like informed consent, protection from harm, and confidentiality are the rules; the IRB is the referee. A study only happens if the IRB agrees the proposal follows these rules, so any question about a guideline is implicitly a question about what an IRB would check.
Deception and Debriefing (Unit 1)
Deception isn't automatically banned, but it needs IRB sign-off. The board allows it only when the study can't work otherwise, the deception causes minimal harm, and researchers commit to a full debriefing that reveals the truth afterward.
Confidentiality (Unit 1)
The IRB requires a plan for keeping participant data private before approving a study. This is exactly the issue raised by survey research on sensitive topics, like a school-wide survey about student stress and mental health.
Bystander Effect and Classic Social Psych Studies (Unit 4)
Classic social psychology experiments, like staged emergencies used to study the bystander effect, leaned heavily on deception and induced stress. Modern IRB review is partly a reaction to that era, which is why some famous Unit 4 studies could not be run the same way today.
Multiple-choice questions usually test the IRB at the definition-plus-application level. A typical stem asks for the IRB's main responsibility (protecting the rights and welfare of human participants) or describes a proposed study and asks what an IRB would require before approval, such as informed consent, confidentiality protections, or a debriefing plan for deception. On the free-response side, ethics shows up in research scenarios. A released short-answer question described a survey of high school students' physical and psychological health, the kind of setup where you apply concepts like confidentiality and consent with minors. On the revised exam, the AAQ can also ask you to describe how researchers addressed ethical guidelines in a real study, so practice spotting IRB-relevant safeguards (consent, anonymity, debriefing) in a methods section.
Both involve experts evaluating research, but they happen at opposite ends of the process. The IRB reviews a study BEFORE it runs and judges its ethics, asking whether participants will be protected. Peer review happens AFTER the study, when other scientists evaluate the quality of the methods and conclusions before publication. Quick check: IRB = ethics, before. Peer review = scientific quality, after.
The IRB's main responsibility is protecting the rights and welfare of human participants in research, which it does by reviewing studies before they begin.
An IRB can approve a study, require changes, or reject it, based on whether the benefits of the research justify the risks to participants.
The IRB enforces the ethical guidelines from Topic 1.6, including informed consent, protection from harm, confidentiality, and debriefing after deception.
Deception is allowed only with IRB approval, and only when the study requires it, harm is minimal, and participants are fully debriefed afterward.
Don't confuse the IRB with peer review. The IRB evaluates ethics before a study runs, while peer review evaluates scientific quality after the research is done.
An IRB is a committee at a research institution that reviews proposed studies involving human participants to protect their rights and welfare. It approves, modifies, or rejects research based on ethical guidelines like informed consent and confidentiality.
No. The IRB allows deception when the study couldn't work without it, the risk of harm is minimal, and researchers debrief participants afterward by revealing the study's true purpose. Deception without those safeguards is what gets a proposal rejected.
The IRB reviews a study's ethics before it runs; peer review evaluates a study's scientific quality after it's done, before publication. If an exam question is about protecting participants, the answer is IRB, not peer review.
It checks for informed consent (or assent plus parental consent for minors), protection from physical and psychological harm, confidentiality of participant data, justified use of any deception, and a debriefing plan. It also weighs whether the study's benefits outweigh its risks.
Mostly in multiple-choice questions asking its main responsibility or what a proposed study needs to get approved, and in free-response research scenarios. The AAQ can also ask how researchers in a real study addressed ethical guidelines, which is essentially asking what an IRB would check.