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Jan. 3
Threat Seen to Oral History
In theory, those who face reviews of their work would like to have those processes expedited. But historians are protesting plans to specify that oral history is eligible for expedited reviews by institutional review boards because doing so would establish the principle that IRB’s have oversight of such scholarship.
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In the last week, the American Historical Association, along with a number of individual historians, have weighed in with the Office for Human Research Protections, the Department of Health and Human Services agency that oversees IRB’s, arguing that the proposal to cover oral history would hinder many scholars’ work while not offering any important protections to those who give oral history interviews.
Citing a “long and unhappy experience” with IRB’s, the association called for oral history to be exempt from their oversight. In fact, the association said that some readings of current law already exempt oral history, but the language being proposed could have the impact of making such interpretations impossible.
IRB’s are institutionally based boards required by federal law to review experiments with human subjects. The boards were created out of the view that someone needs to be looking out for the subjects being studied in research to minimize risks and make sure that subjects are fully informed of those risks. While scholars in a range of disciplines criticize IRB’s for sometimes delaying work, there is a widespread consensus that they also protect people who need protecting. In medical research especially, ethics experts say that IRB’s have assured that experimental treatments have been tested to appropriate levels with non-human subjects before shifting to people and that those who undergo experimental treatments (or who may end up in a placebo group) understand the risks.
In the social sciences, criticism of IRB’s has been particularly intense, with scholars saying that boards dominated by biomedical scientists don’t understand the risks and rewards of the research projects they are reviewing in other fields. The historians’ criticism fits into this line of attack. For instance, the letter from the American Historical Association noted instances in which scholars proposing oral history interviews were told that they would be approved only if the subjects were anonymous — even though the very reason for the interviews was that the subjects were particular people whose individual stories merited attention.
“IRB’s are applying rigid research criteria that are fundamentally at odds with oral history practices,” said the AHA’s letter.
Many historians question whether IRB’s ever had any reason to be examining oral history. Zachary M. Schrag, an assistant professor of history at George Mason University, has been studying the history of IRB activity in the social sciences. The language in the current regulations that has encouraged some IRB’s to look at oral history was adopted in 1998, with the endorsement of major history groups. But as Schrag noted in his comments on the new proposal, those groups endorsed the idea only after “overzealous” IRB’s were applying their standards to oral history projects — which for decades had gone on without such reviews. The hope in 1998 was that by setting out a path for expedited review, the intense scrutiny and resulting delays would end. Schrag also noted that — unlike the biological sciences — oral history has not had scandals or any indications that its conduct poses a risk to subjects.
The idea in 1998 was to encourage some modest oversight to keep IRB’s from doing too much, but Schrag’s letter said that it had the “perverse effect of ratifying the behavior it sought to restrain.”
An official of the Office for Human Research Protections said that many individual historians had written in as well. It is not known when the office will issue a response to the historians who have requested a change.
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Comments
IRB Oversight of Oral History
It is a requirement that IRBs be consist of representatives of various disciplines. Social Science representation should be provided so that the perspective of historians is understood. For those IRBs recognized by the federal government, breadth of representation is one of the items examined before federal-wide approval can be obtained. If proper distribution of subject areas is provided, serious misunderstandings (such as the idea that oral history providers should be anonymous) ought to be avoided. Faculty members should be aware of who is on their institution’s IRB and who appoints those people.
Landy Johnson, Director of Grant Development at Assumption College, at 9:50 am EST on January 3, 2008
IRB more than physical health
As a medical educator, I work with IRBs and am as frustrated as the rest of the academic community. The preceding comment that the only role of the IRB is to protect biomedical subjects from physical harm is a little short sighted.
The IRB also ensures that subjects are free from psychological harm. i.e. wouldn’t it be neat to tell a group of experimental subjects that they are HIV positive and then study their reactions? Of course not. No IRB should allow that.
The other important oversight of IRBs is avoiding coercion of subjects. When the researcher has a realtionship with the subject, a sense of obligation to participate can occur. So Eductor-Student or Doctor-Patient relationships have to be free of the perception that their care will be different or their grades will be different if they don’t participate.
Doc Scott, at 10:05 am EST on January 3, 2008
IRBs also protect the confidentiality of informants. The Oral History people have raised no complaints that wouldn’t also apply to many other social science researchers who now must submit their research to IRB review. Yes, IRBs are inconvenient, but to evade responsibility for protection of subjects is wrong. If oral history researchers were to suggest methods for protecting their subjects, they wouldn’t be encountering the same push for inclusion, but they mainly are insisting they do not have to submit to any oversight of their research, something that does not bolster confidence in their willingness or ability to protect their informants. Some of the practices oral historians claim would be impossible are perhaps things they should not be doing at all. For example, one oral historian suggested that if informed consent is required, then grandpa might not continue with the details of his story because the interruption would break the flow of reminiscence. However, if reminding grandpa that his details will become part of a permanent record might influence his willingness to speak, shouldn’t he have that protection? People are capable of being embarrassed and harmed by confidences encouraged by researchers who do not make clear the uses that will be made of what is said. I am much less concerned about threats to oral history than I am concerned about the callous disregard of the rights of those who are studied. The good old days of doing whatever you want to subjects are over in most fields. It is time for oral history to come into the 21st century and do right by their subjects — even if its cramps their style to do so.
Perry, at 11:40 am EST on January 3, 2008
The fact that IRBs include social scientists does nothing to address the issue for oral historians or, I might add, anthropologists. A protocol that might protect subjects in a medical or psych lab really had no bearing on what we, as fieldworkers, were doing, and in no way addressed any possible ethical concerns. It did put stupid obstacles in our way of doing fairly benign research projects, while sometimes allowing rather sinister projects in the psych department to go through because they followed protocol.
H, at 12:25 pm EST on January 3, 2008
IRB foolishness
Research by oral historians, literary literary historians, scholars in the modern languages, and much of that conducted by all social scientists already is controlled by the same two-letter word when a “subject” or sources in contacted: NO. When the researcher asks for an interview, he/she already faces many NOs from “subjects” who don’t want to spend the time or who don’t care to tell their story. This is essentially the problem every journalist faces whether seeking comment from the Secretary of State, a government bureaucrat, a corporate flack, a person on the street, a victim of a natural disaster, a high school athlete, or a university administrator. Neither the journalist nor the oral historian or any scholar seeking comment from sources has any authority to force a conversation. Basically the “subject” has the choice/opportunity to put his or her spin on a researcher’s interpretation of history or a journalist’s framing of a news story or magazine feature.
What’s next? Will my undergraduates in magazine feature writing be required to run a schedule of questions by an IRB in order to complete a course assignment that requires asking a live “subject” or source a question?
Moreover, there is that pesky often disrespected 1st Amendment right of free speech, which I assume gives me the right to ask questions as well as make statements and gives my “subjects” or sources the right to offer their views or not.
A major difference, which justifies IRB requirements for biomedical and psychological experimentation, is that oral historians and journalists aren’t shrinking heads of or shoving nuclear materials into the veins of their subjects.
Joseph Bernt Professor of JournalismOhio University
Joseph Bernt, Professor of Journalism at Ohio University, at 12:40 pm EST on January 3, 2008
IRB reviews of oral history
While the IRB’s seem important for the protection of human subjects, their original purpose, as has been pointed out, was to prevent abuses of the reductionstic sciences treating their human subjects as mere objects. Studies back in the 1960s where cardiac patients had implants inserted without their knowledge that contained mercury switches would be a case in point. Now, however, the IRB’s themselves, and the Federal Institutions that now mandate them, are made up of scientifically trained members, a situation not unlike the police investigating themselves. They remain people of the number; they are not people of the book. In this regard, let us be clear. A trained experimental scientist is not automatically a qualified scholar, for reasons that go to the heart of why IRB’s should not be permitted to treat simply anyone who is interviewed as the mere object of study or an ananymous subject of an experiment. In addition, the IRB’s have also become primary ways in which the sponsoring institutions can legally protect themselves, but that is conveniently never mentioned. So the urge to protect subjects is not the only excuse they now have for functioning, As the late Sigmund Koch has pointed out, the behavioral sciences in particular are guilty of creating a culture of ameaning throughout modern societies, where the answer to every social ill is to get a grant and generate more data. The humanities are more experiential, more phenomenological, and more person-centered, a point of view the objective sciences just do not get, tho’ anthropology, existential psychology, and depth psychology come close. The reductionistic sciences should not be permitted to dictate to the humaniites how their research shall be conducted. Rather, the humanities should be dictating to the sciences the inherent limits of confusing the scientific method for the scientific world view. The method generates facts. The world view is an opinion. For these reasons, all scholars should resist the encroachment of the sciences into the domain of the humanities.
Eugene Taylor, PhD, Executive Faculty at Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center, at 3:00 pm EST on January 3, 2008
Informed Consent and Infantilization
The reason that there are special requirements (and thus IRBs to supervise those requirements) for the obtaining informed consent to either medical or psychological experimentation is that non-specialists cannot be reasonably expected to have existing knowledge of the risks that they might incur by participation in such research.
Oral history (and most qualitative social science research, particularly ethnography) is completely different in this respect. In the United States, for example, we expect that any adult can vote for the candidate of their choosing in elections, choose when and whether to drink alcohol, be responsible for their own actions, and choose to participate in whatever conversations and interactions they deem appropriate. In broader terms, that’s how we construct rights-bearing individuals everywhere: as subjects able to exercise control over their own daily affairs and decisions.
The decision to talk to a historical researcher or ethnographer belongs in the range of general decisions that we trust all individuals to make for themselves and that require no specialized knowledge to evaluate. The only basic requirement we should have of a researcher in this work is that they adequately disclose their own identity and purpose before beginning a formal interview in which the informant will be named. Ethnographers, like journalists, ought to be free to describe in general terms what they see and hear in the course of living, travelling and studying.
Is this work subject to review? Certainly, in the ordinary processes of peer review, in the building of tenure dossiers, in the things that we write about each other’s scholarly works as a matter of course.
There’s no legitimate role for an IRB in this kind of work, because for an IRB to assert the need to supervise the process of consent is to assert that ordinary people do not understand history and memory and cannot properly consent to engage in conversation, dialogue and recollection of history and memory unless they are properly informed by specialists or experts.
Humanistic inquiry is not scientific inquiry. Humanistic inquiry is about the interpretation of universal or generally distributed experiences, knowledge and culture, about using research to explore and illuminate shared heritage. IRBs that insert themselves forcefully into oral history and ethnography infantilize human subjects and accentuate the arrogance of expertise.
Ordinary people are perfectly capable of deciding for themselves whether to share their memories or perspectives on their own history and culture.
Timothy Burke, Associate Professor at Swarthmore College, at 4:30 pm EST on January 3, 2008
Oral History
Oral history programs have been dealing with such issues as confidentiality and coercion for years. Virtually all of them require interviewees to sign a document that, among other things, sets forth the terms and conditions by which their memoir can be taken and used. Such documents make it possible for interviewees to close a memoir (or sections thereof) for an extended period. These practices were in place long before IRBs began to oversee oral history.
When confronted by IRBs, oral historians took even greater pains to protect their rights and those of their interviewees. Working with the American Historical Association, the Oral History Association developed a statement of good practice that both IRB members and oral historians should read and observe. It is always a good idea for individual scholars to work with an established oral history program when doing oral history interviews. The directors of such programs are usually familiar with the concerns that IRBs raise and can help such scholars protect themselves and their interviewees. Yes, it’s time consuming but in the long run it’s best for all concerned.
William Cutler, Professor at Temple University, at 4:30 pm EST on January 3, 2008
IRBs are not merely a threat to academic freedom. They are a threat to the freedom of speech. They impose prior restraints on people who wish to talk to others and report what they say. If the Federal Government insists on a review before they will award funds for certain research, that I suppose is their business. It is their money (not really). But IRBs review all research. They essentially determine what can be said and what can be reported. It is time that these boards were discontued for nonmedical research. It is time that academics started ignoring them entirely.
Elliott Oring, Professor, Emertitus at California State University, Los Angeles, at 7:50 pm EST on January 3, 2008
IRBs
I’ve been through IRB processes on three campuses now, and never had a problem getting approval for research. However, I have often run into the problem later that Joe Berndt refers to, in potential participants refusing to sign a consent form (and me losing a participant). These forms are unnecessarily dense and intimidating, designed more (in my view) to protect the institution than to protect the subject signing them. I’ve started apologizing for the form, saying “this is the legal bureaucracy we have to abide by” and “this is a standard form used by all universities.” Many still won’t sign.
By the way, in some of my research, I’ve received permission (no questions asked) to use names of informants — this, of course, requires the consent form to state this will be done.
Carolyn M. Byerly, Associate Professor, Journalism at Howard University, at 7:55 pm EST on January 3, 2008
I find it amazing that our government can justify spying on its citizens in a variety of contexts, yet as scholars we are required to jump through such hoops simply to have a conversation. When I was a graduate student, I had to undergo IRB approval to interview my *grandfather.*
Lisa Gabbert, Assistant Professor at Utah State University, at 12:55 pm EST on January 4, 2008
Human Subjects Research
There are a number of gray issues in humans subjects research protection and, in terms of the federal regulation 45CFR46, one of these gray areas is whether or not oral history research is meets the 45CFR46 definition of “human subjects research". Arguably, much oral history research is not “designed to develop or contribute to GENERALIZABLE knowledge” and thus would fall outside of the purview of the IRB (at least in terms of the federal regulations, though IRBs may have their own additional institutional policies in place).
Sometimes IRBs are too quick to see any interaction with human subjects as an IRB issue This is not necessarily a problem with the regulations, but a problem with the interpretation of the regulations and an insufficient application of definitions and “requirements”
It is also important to recognize that even if the oral history study meets the definition of human subjects research it may meet one of the 45CFR46 exemption categories (category #2, addressing interview research with adults that is either anonymous or dealing with non-sensitive issues). If it meets this exemption category, the IRB can be less restrictive in its requirements, particularly in terms of the consent forms.
Even if the research data IS individually identifiable (non-anonymous) AND “sensitive", the IRB may be able to waive the requirements for a SIGNED consent form ("documentation of consent").
Bottom line — If, as an oral history researcher, you are following a standard methodology for your various studies and you believe that your methods are unlikely to develop generalizable knowledge, speak to your IRB about whether or not your procedures meet the definition of human subjects research.
IRBs vary greatly in their interpretation of the regulations and in their institutional IRB policies. This can lead to confusion and frustration. If IRBs point to the federal regulations, don’t be afraid to question (discuss?) whether or not they are interpreting them correctly. IRBs are made up of human beings, fallible as everyone else.
Also see an article by Jeff Cohen on OHRP and Oral History:http://hrpp.blogspot.com/2006_11_01_archive.html
Grant Benham, Associate Professor and IRB Chair at University of Texas — Pan American, at 4:30 pm EST on January 4, 2008
IRBs
Much IRB activity is stupid, as this article reports, but perhaps what is needed is more involvement by social scientists and historians on the IRB doing the hard work of conducting reviews and not leaving it the lab-coat types.
Dr. Alex King, Lecturer of Anthropology at University of Aberdeen, UK, at 5:50 pm EST on January 4, 2008
Many oral history projects probably do not meet the OHRP definition of research, and are therefore free from the need to go to an IRB for approval. They are not hypothesis-based projects and they do not produce generalizable results.
In addition IRB rules only apply to federally funded research unless the participating institution voluntarily agrees to treat all research in this way.
Eaton Lattman, Dear of Research at Johns Hopkins Krieger School of Arts and Sciences, at 2:15 pm EST on January 9, 2008
I agree with others who suggest that the best strategy is to have more social scientists and historians on IRBs — perhaps even volunteer yourselves? I find it more constructive to educate colleages rather than be combative. My IRB readily accepted the standards and practices established by the Oral History Association.
Heather Munro Prescott, Professor of History at Central Connecticut State University, at 4:55 pm EST on January 14, 2008
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IRBs Threaten Academic Freedom
In addition to being a useless bureaucracy, IRBs have often limited academic freedom. It’s time to return them to their original purpose: to monitor medical experimentation. The only role of IRBs should be to protect the physical health of subjects in research, and oral history (and much more) should be completely out of bounds for regulation. Now, if professors and students want advice at improving their research, there should be a separate, voluntary board of research advisors that perform the role that too many IRBs have undertaken.
John K. Wilson, collegefreedom.org, at 9:40 am EST on January 3, 2008