RENEWAL APPROVAL REQUEST for Studies Involving Human Subjects

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
IRB Behavioral Sciences Committee

Type all information which you provide.  Approval MUST be renewed annually if you continue to recruit subjects, gather data or are analyzing your data. IMPORTANT NOTICE: YOU MUST INCLUDE  the consent form(s) and any instruments that have changed from last year’s approval.  (Enclose a debriefing form if you will be using the Intro Psych Subject Pool.) Submit two copies of each of the above.  * Submit 16 copies of each form if your subjects are minors involving more than minimal risk, juveniles or prisoners.* Omission of these items will delay the review process.

Principal Investigator:	Paul Resnick		File number: _6752_______	  Last  approval date: __1/31/02_____				
School/Department: Information					Faculty Advisor’s Name   Paul Resnick

Office Address:  314 West Hall	Campus Zip: 1092

Home address: 214 Buena Vista, Ann Arbor, 48103

Office Phone: 734-647-9458	Home Phone: 734-998-1329	E-mail address:	presnick@umich.edu

Check status:    _M__Gender (M or F)   ___Doctoral candidate,  _x__Faculty,  ___Graduate student, 
		          ___Post doc  ___Research scientist,  ___Staff member,  ___Undergraduate student

Start Date of Project: 1/1/02	End Date of Project:    8/1/03	 Is this work for a course? Y	Which one? SI684/884

DRDA # if known		       Is this work for your dissertation?    Yes_____      No _____

Contact Person if other than P.I. (i.e., Admin Ass’t, Research Ass’t, etc.):
Contact Person’s E-mail:				Contact Person’s Phone:

Title of Proposal: Analyzing E-communities (Student Course Projects)

Will your subject sample involve UofM students?
	If yes, will subjects be obtained from the Intro Psych Subject Pool?	 	 Yes ____   No__x___
	If yes, will subjects be obtained from the Housing office:			 Yes_____  No___x__	
	If yes, but another source, please explain where:  ________________________________________	

Will there be subjects be under the age of 18?    			Yes ____  No __x___  (except where subjects conceal their age)
Will prisoners or juveniles in detention centers be subjects?	Yes_____   No__x__

Does this study involve secondary analysis only?   		Yes____   No__x___   
If Yes, attach a brief description of study and indicate from which databank the data will be obtained.
 Can the data be linked?    					Yes _____       No_____

If proposal has been or will be submitted to an agency,  Agency Name

Federally funded?   Yes ___    No _x__   Pending ____    IF YOU ARE AWAITING FUNDING
to develop instruments and or consent forms, etc., please check here:   n
Are there or will there be other versions of this proposal submitted to other agencies?  Yes ___   No ___   

Have these versions been submitted to the IRB for review? 	Yes ___   No ___     IRB File # 
If “no”, please submit these.  Please highlight the sections that are different from those in the present application.

Return to: IRB Behavioral Sciences Committee, 1040 Fleming Administration Building, Campus 1340

Rev. 2.01	QUESTIONS?  Contact Kate M. Keever by e-mail     IRB-Behavsci-Health@umich.edu

Has the title of your study changed?  If so, please indicate previous approved title: 

No____________________________________________________________________________________________

Has the name of the Principal Investigator changed?  If so, please indicate previous name.

No____________________________________________________________________________________________

I.  Attach a brief summary or abstract of your study .

As part of course SI 684/884 (684 for master’s students; 884 for doctoral), students will each pick an existing e-community to analyze. An e-community is any group of people who interact repeatedly over time, via electronic means. For example: an-email list, a gaming environment, a netnews group, eBay, or a chat room could all be e-communities, if used in certain ways.

Each student will observe and, when appropriate, participate in the e-community they are analyzing. They may also contact other participants or leaders of the e-community through private communication channels (email or phone). Each student will analyze their community in terms of its purpose(s), technology used, member roles, identifiers, identities, inter-group relations, norms, and governance. Each student will write several short papers and then combine them into a term paper. 

Each student will submit a proposal for private contact with subjects to the IRB consonant with the overall guidelines in this description.

II.  Please answer the following questions:

1.	Have there been any changes to your study since last year’s approval?   __x__Yes    ____ No
(See summary below of my request for changes, mostly minor, in procedures for students to follow in carrying out their term projects.)

2.	Number of subjects accrued?

3.	Number of subjects expected to be recruited in the future?

4.	From where will you recruit your subjects?
Each student will “join” the e-community he or she analyzes. In some cases, this will involve registering, in other cases it is possible to participate without registering. The student will then interact with other people who are voluntarily participating in the e-community.

5.	Are subjects obtained from the Introductory Psychology Subject Pool?   ____ Yes     __x__ No
	(Note:  A debriefing form is required)

6.	Description of:

		a.	any adverse events or unanticipated problems involving risks to subjects or others;
none

		b.	any withdrawal of subjects from the research;
none

		c.	complaints about the research.
none

		d.	Any recent literature published pertaining to this research?
none

e.	Have there been any significant new findings that relate to this study?  If so, please reflect on how these findings may affect the risk/benefit ratio for your subjects.
none

7.	Summary of any amendments or modifications to the research since last review.
The most important change I am requesting is that students be allowed to conduct passive observation, of public activity only, while they are waiting for approval from the IRB of their plans for private contact with members of their eCommunity. For example, if the eCommunity a student chooses for the term project has a public bulletin board, the student would be able to read the messages on that bulletin board. The student would not write messages to the bulletin board until after the IRB approves the student’s proposal for how they will inform the community of what they will be doing and how the data collected will be used.

The second substantive change is that, after getting approval for their particular projects, students would include the disclaimer text only in introductory messages, so that anyone interacting with the student for the first time would be informed that the student was conducting research, but would not see that text repeated in every subsequent message.

I have also lightly edited the text that students will use as a template for creating their introductory messages, and for the web page or personal profile that will be visible to members of the e-community they are studying. They are intended to make the messages slightly clearer for readers. They are also intended to make the templates more generic, so that students can use them verbatim with limited substitutions, thus streamlining the process for the IRB in approving each of the student requests. That is, the text that all the students use will be almost identical, so that the IRB will only need to consider the nature of the community being studied, and which individual members the student is proposing to contact.
	
Most e-communities have some way that participants introduce themselves (e.g., a message to an email list, or a static “profile” that other members can inspect). Each student will include a message in their introduction stating that he or she is analyzing the e-community for a course, providing the URL for the course syllabus, and the URL for a page that the student will post their papers about the community so that the community members can see what is being written about them. Both the course site and the student’s site will contain information about what information will be used for, and the conditions under which screen names will be revealed.

For private conversations, students will include a section at the bottom of each message indicating the same information described above for the community introduction.

-----------sample text for intro message

For a class project, I am studying [name of eCommunity]. My term paper will describe [name of eCommunity]’s purpose, the technologies used, roles, identifiers and identities, intergroup relations, norms of behavior, and governance mechanisms. For more information about the course, see http://www.si.umich.edu/~presnick/courses/winter03/684/

I will make my findings available at [say how: either a reference to your personal profile site within the eCommunity’s space, or write “at <url-for-your-personal-page-on-this-project>”] Feedback would be welcome any time. I have also included information there about how your privacy will be protected.

If you have any concerns about how I am conducting this study, you may contact me by email at [student’s email address here] or contact Professor Resnick at presnick@umich.edu. Questions may also be directed to the Behavioral Sciences office which is located at 1040 Fleming Administration Building, 503 Thompson Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1340. Phone: (734) 936-0933. Fax: (734) 647-9084. Email:IRB-Behavsci-Health@umich.edu

----------sample text for personal profile page or your-personal-web-page-on-this-project

For a class project, I am studying [name of eCommunity]. My term paper will describe [name of eCommunity]’s purpose, the technologies used, roles, identifiers and identities, intergroup relations, norms of behavior, and governance mechanisms. For more information about the course, see http://www.si.umich.edu/~presnick/courses/winter03/684/

Generally, I will participate in the community as any other member would and will simply make notes about interesting things that I observe. I will retain copies of interesting text that people have written and shared in public places. I may also contact individuals directly, via email or telephone. I will always begin such contacts by announcing who I am and what I’m doing. I will respect the wishes of anyone who indicates they do not wish to interact with me.

I would need to get parental consent for any direct contact (e.g., private email) with anyone under 18 years old. When I have questions about how the e-community is working, I will make every effort to contact only people who are 18 or older. If you are under 18 and I mistakenly contact you, please ignore my message or tell me that you can’t answer my questions.

I will save the information I have collected until I have completed all the analyses that I need for my class project and possibly for a published version of my term paper. In any case, I will not save the data for more than three years.

The data that I gather will remain confidential to the extent allowable under local, state and federal law. If my paper refers to individuals or quotes what individuals have said or written, the paper will not refer to them by name or screename [or userid, or whatever the community calls its identifiers]. The only exception will be if I quote something that is available in an archive for all members to see. In that case, one’s words would not carry an expectation of privacy, and omitting the name would create a false sense of privacy since people would be able to discover the name by searching the archive.

If you have any concerns about how I am conducting this study, you may contact me by email at [student’s email address here] or contact Professor Resnick at presnick@umich.edu. Questions may also be directed to the Behavioral Sciences office which is located at 1040 Fleming Administration Building, 503 Thompson Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1340. Phone: (734) 936-0933. Fax: (734) 647-9084. Email:IRB-Behavsci-Health@umich.edu 

[Links to drafts of papers you write about the community would go here.]

8.	Do you intend to obtain written consent?  Yes___   No ___  If not, why not?  If using oral consent, please attach the text that is used.
See text above for procedures.

Federal regulations require that we have current consent form(s) being used on file.  Attach a copy of: 1.) the current consent form, [even if identical to last year’s] and    2.) any revisions in the consent form to accommodate any protocol amendments or adverse events encountered. Failure to do so will result in the delay of the review process.

SIGNATURE PAGE

This area should be signed by the principal investigator.

____________________________________________________         		________________________
Signature of Principal Investigator 						Date

A research proposal by an undergraduate, graduate or doctoral student must have the following statement signed by a faculty supervisor.

"I have examined this completed form and I am satisfied with the adequacy of the proposed research design and the measures proposed for the protection of human subjects.  I will take responsibility for informing the student of the need for the safekeeping of all raw data (e.g., test protocols, tapes, questionnaires, interview notes, etc.) in a University office or computer file."

______________________________________    		_____________________________________
Print Name and Title of Faculty Supervisor			Signature of Faculty Supervisor					
	
______________________________________        		____________________________________		           	Date						Office Phone