Excerpted from: Oakes, Michael J. (University of Minnesota) Risks and Wrongs in Social Science Research: An Evaluator’s Guide to the IRB; Evaluation Review, Vol. 26 No. 5, October 2002, 443-479

• Carefully plan the ethical aspects of your study from the very beginning—study the Belmont Report.
• Attach to your IRB application a cover letter summarizing your study, with special attention to human subject interactions.
• Examine university and Office of Human Research Protections (OHRP) Web sites for examples and specific directions.
• If you have questions, telephone and talk with your IRB administrator.

• Ask yourself if you would honestly want someone you love to participate in your study.
• Work hard to ensure that recruitment materials yield equitable and noncoercive results.
• Write consent forms at an eighth-grade reading level.
• Overestimate risks and underestimate benefits.
• Educate and debrief subjects on the nature, purpose, and findings of your study.
• Establish procedures to delink identifying information from main data sets and sources.
• Establish procedures to encrypt any and all identifying information and destroy it as soon as possible.
• If you disagree with an IRB decision, read the regulations and then ask for an in-person meeting to discuss things.
• Remember that research is not a right but a privilege and IRBs are peer review groups.
• Educate your local IRB and then volunteer for it.
• Never forget that IRBs did not spontaneously appear to frustrate scientists; they are a direct consequence of many documented violations of very basic ethical principles.