Students as Research Participants

The IRB strongly discourages faculty from using students currently enrolled in their own courses as subjects in their own research project unless there are sound reasons. A problem with student participation in research conducted by the students' instructor is the possibility that their agreement to participate will not be freely given – that they will feel subtly coerced, even if that is not your intention. Students may volunteer to participate out of a belief that doing so will place them in good favor with the instructor (i.e., that participating will result in receiving better grades, recommendations, or the like), or that failure to participate will negatively affect their relationship with the faculty generally (i.e., by seeming "uncooperative"). For this reason, the IRB pays special attention to the potential for coercion or undue influence and researchers should consider ways to reduce or eliminate the possibility of exploitation/coercion.

Extra Credit for Research Participation

A related concern is the potential for coercion in the use of extra credit as an incentive for an instructor’s own students to participate in the instructor’s or a colleague’s research project.  Offering extra credit for participation in research is common, but not without problems. The justification most often offered for requiring student participation is educational benefit. Clearly, however, faculty-investigators may also need students in order to conduct their research, and giving course credit or extra credit is a means of obtaining sufficient participation rates.

Minimizing the Potential for Coercion or Undue Influence

There are ways to diminish the coercive aspect of student participation.

  • Instructors can have the data collected by an independent third party such as a colleague in their own or another department. They should do this in such a way that they would not know the identity of the students in the courses that participate: The instructor should not be present when the data are collected from the students in your courses and the third party should not be another student in the course.
  • Instructors should make every effort to design the data collection so that they cannot easily access the students’ names. Using an anonymous questionnaire without a signed consent form (oral consent) is the simplest method.  However, If there is a need to match data from numerous sources or across time for individual students, you can use an identification number on a questionnaire that is matched to an identification number on their informed consent form.  In all cases, the informed consent form should be turned in separately from the data collection instrument. 
  • Instructors can minimize coercion by providing their students with other extra credit options that are comparable in terms of time, effort, and educational benefit.  Quite often faculty offer short papers, special projects, book reports, and brief quizzes on additional readings as alternatives to participating in the instructor's research project. This raises the issue about the comparability of such alternatives with participating in research (e.g., that if they participate in studies, all they have to do is show up and spend the time, but if they choose to write a paper, it gets graded, and if they do extra readings, they have to be tested on them).   One way to meet these concerns would be to give the alternatives of having students (1) participate in the research, (2) write a brief research paper which is not graded, or (3) attend a presentation by a campus speaker where they only have to show up to receive credit. Any extra credit, if provided, should not exceed 2% of the student's final grade. 

Note for federally funded research that uses a department’s participant pool:

“OHRP has posted on its website a January 8, 2010 letter to a commercial company, which provides a web-based system for managing student subject pools, in the belief that others may find the content to be useful. This letter clarifies that imposing penalty credits on students who fail to show up for scheduled appointments with investigators without cancelling by a specified deadline violates the requirement of Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) regulations at 45 CFR part 46.116(a)(8). Such penalties may not be implemented for non-exempt human subjects research conducted or supported by HHS... OHRP’s determination in this matter applies to any system used for managing student subject pools, not just the commercial web-based system referenced in OHRP’s letter.”

- Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP)
Monday, January 11, 2010
7:10 PM

Recruitment by Non-College of Charleston Researchers

Researchers who are not affiliated with the College of Charleston may not recruit our students as research participants without the approval of the College of Charleston IRB.  Non-affiliated researchers must complete an External Request to Recruit Research Participants form and have a contact person at the College of Charleston who is willing to assist as necessary.  Further, the research must provide a benefit to the College of Charleston student or College of Charleston community.