Institutional Review Board

[gnomygnomy.livejournal.com]

Hi all,

I was wondering if universities in Russia have an equivalent for what's called the Institutional Review Board (or IRB). Essentially, the IRB's job is to ensure that any kind of research being conducted does not harm its human participants in any way. Several years back, I was a participant in someone's thesis project at SPbSU, but I don't remember signing any kind of IRB-type document or release. I wasn't harmed, by any means! It just made me wonder, do universities here and there share the same sort of red tape when it comes to human research?

Comments

[konstkaras.livejournal.com]

I thing the closet equivalent was safety techniques briefing (инструктаж по технике безопасности) usually held by safety techniques engineer (if present) for all employees or students - with signing in journal of listened briefings (by person) and in clearance chit (by the engineer).
But, were there some medical or psychological experiments over people?

[nic102.livejournal.com]

Not surprising. The whole country is one big experiment on human subjects. I was born there but don't remember signing any release forms.

[malinguo.livejournal.com]

I'm a bit late to this party, but I suspect there is nothing like US-style IRB reviews in Russia. The academic system is all sorts of bureaucratic, but they are generally not concerned with things like consent forms. If you want a more informed answer, I would suggest reposting this to http://philologist-ru.livejournal.com/ or http://terra-linguarum.livejournal.com.

By the way, as far as studies go, if you participated in an online questionnaire that did not ask for any identifying information, it would not require IRB approval in US. If it was something more personal or intrusive, then it's different.