LINGUIST List 2.763

Wed 06 Nov 1991

Qs: Human Research

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1. , Human Research Committees

I would like to open a new thread for discussion. Faculty
and students here in Linguistics at SIU are being hassled
(at least that's our perception of it) by the Human
Subjects Committee. To what extent have people on this
net been asked to clear their research through such a committee?
What I have in mind is ordinary linguistic and ESL research--
such things as getting grammaticality judgments from an
entire classroom of people, tape recording subjects speaking
a variety of languages, asking ESL or FL composition classes
to write on specific topics, or after seeing some video or
other `treatment'. Specifically, does such work have to
be cleared by a university-wide human subjects committee?
What if the research is for a class term paper? What about
for an MA thesis topic? Is there a radical difference made
if tape recording is used, even if this only involves reading
lists of words? We have just been threatened with being
reported to the Feds if we don't clear *all* research, no
matter how informal, non-invasive, anonymous... as long
as it involves collecting data. Is this normal procedure
and we are just behind the times, or are other linguists and
ES/FL (or other XFL) researchers having to clear all classroom
and office-based research with the University-wide committee.
I would appreciate personal answers if you don't think this
needs net-wide discussion, but I rather suspect it might need
to be aired more widely.
Thanks,
 Geoff Nathan <ga3662siucvmb>
 for the Department of Linguistics, SIUC