Institutional Review Board (IRB) in AP Psychology

What an IRB looks for in a research proposal

A researcher submits the full plan to the IRB: the procedure, the participants, the materials, and how the data will be stored. The board weighs the risks to participants against the scientific benefit and checks each ethical guideline AP Psychology expects you to know.

• Informed consent: participants learn what they're agreeing to and know they can quit anytime. Minors need permission from a parent or guardian, plus their own agreement.
• Minimal harm: physical or psychological risk is kept as low as possible (the principle of non-maleficence).
• Confidentiality: names and responses are protected and not tied to individuals in reports.
• Deception: allowed only when the study couldn't work without it and the risk is low. Using a confederate can involve deception if participants are misled about the confederate's role.
• Debriefing: a plan to explain the true purpose afterward, especially when deception was used.

The IRB doesn't run the study or collect data. It's a gatekeeper that signs off before anyone is recruited.

Using the IRB to judge whether a scenario was ethical

The IRB belongs to the research methods strand of AP Psychology, under the course-wide skill of evaluating whether a research scenario followed appropriate ethical procedures (skill 2.D). Because it's a skill and not one content topic, IRB questions can attach to a study from any unit, whether it's on memory, sleep, conformity, or therapy outcomes.

Here's a scenario. A researcher wants to see whether people conform to a group's wrong answers, so she plants confederates who pretend to be fellow participants and give incorrect responses on purpose. Since participants are misled about who these people are, this is deception. An IRB might approve it if the deception is justified, there's no suitable way to run the study without it, and the risks are kept low. It would also require consent forms that describe the task without giving the purpose away, a right to withdraw, and a debriefing that reveals the confederates and the real hypothesis.

In multiple choice, both set-based and standalone, keep in mind that the IRB is the body that must approve a study before it begins and before participants are recruited. If an answer choice says the participants themselves or the journal editor decide, that's a distractor.

Handling IRB approval in Article Analysis part D

Article Analysis gives you one summarized research article, and part D asks you to identify an ethical guideline described in that summary and describe how it was applied. The summary might mention that an IRB approved the study, or it might describe consent, debriefing, or confidentiality directly.

IRB approval is a form of oversight. The board checks that ethical guidelines are being followed, but approval isn't a guideline itself, so it's a poor choice for part D.

Instead, choose a guideline the summary describes, like informed consent or confidentiality, and explain how the researchers applied it. A weak answer says "the study was approved by an IRB, so it was ethical." A stronger answer names the guideline and connects it to what the summary reports. For example, if the summary says so, you could write "the researchers used informed consent by getting parents' permission and the students' own agreement before the high school participants took the survey."

Only credit protections the summary describes. A line saying the IRB approved the study doesn't tell you that parents gave permission or that answers stayed confidential, so don't assume those details if the article doesn't state them.

Pick whichever guideline the article gives you the most detail on, since that's the one you can describe most specifically.

IRB vs. peer review, the APA, and animal research

The IRB and peer review both involve outside experts judging a study, but the timing and purpose differ. The IRB reviews a study before it starts and asks whether it's ethical for participants. Peer review happens after the study is finished and asks whether the methods and conclusions are sound enough to publish. A study can pass the IRB and still get rejected by a journal for weak methods.

The IRB also isn't the same thing as the American Psychological Association. The APA writes ethical guidelines for psychologists, and a local IRB applies standards like those to individual proposals at its institution.

Research on animals goes through a separate committee (an Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, or IACUC), so if a question is about a study on rats or monkeys, the IRB isn't the body checking human-participant protections like consent and debriefing.