Pilot Your Ethics Methods Posted on December 6, 2007 Celia B. Fisher (bio) describes how an ethics pilot may promote IRB approval.

Another strategy that we have used and that I’ve suggested is that while you’re piloting your research methods, you also pilot your ethics methods. You also pilot your ethics methods. What that means is you take a small group of potential participants and as an advisory group, you ask them the extent to which they understand the consent information.

You ask them whether or not they think that some procedures would be perceived as high risk by others like them, whether or not there would be low risk, how you might maximize benefits and minimize risk and if you can take that advisory information to your IRBs and show how your research fits the population expectations, then I think you have a much better chance of having IRB approval without the kind of conflicts that scientists sometimes experience.

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