IRB

So, I decided that I wanted to add some real student perspectives to my dissertation-- I thought it would be good to say what real children think instead of just assuming what they think-- that sounds reasonable to me. So, I mention this to someone and they tell me to be sure I get my human subject research paperwork submitted. I don't want to do human subject research-- I want to send out an anonymous survey to find out if kids read books and talk about them with their friends-- but apparently that's what human subject research is. To me, human subject research somehow violates the human- that is why you need permission to do it-- but I guess I'm wrong--

Don't misunderstand me-- I know that the kids I want to survey are human. I just thought that since I would never meet them and since they're not telling me their names that it would be anonymous in and of itself. But, I guess it's not. Since I know what school they attend, the IRB people think I could figure out which survey matches up with which kid.

So, today I get to fill out pages and pages of paperwork. When I found out about all of the paperwork, my initial response was to leave out the survey, but I think that would do my project a disservice-- so, I'll let you know how the paper pushing goes.