Thanks for the opportunity to clarify. I'm not sure what you are referring to in terms of an IRB explanation. Did you mean my comment: "Now, given all of the above information, I want to say that we really do respect all of the concerns and fully recognize that times have changed and there needs to be more transparency. We will be working towards this. I regret that the time it takes for universities to �act� is so unbelievably long."
That and your longer note about what is entailed in getting IRB approval:
Speaking of IRB, I want to share the reality of university IRB system. I have been working with the research dept at ACT to �hopefully � conduct a small study with 200 students who will be part of a special testing in Iowa in March. I submitted the IRB proposal on Jan 21. Preparing the IRB is no small task. After receiving the IRB proposal, I received 23 questions that required responses. I responded. After responding to those 23, I received 14 more queries. After responding to those � keep in mind that there are usually several days between queries and response � I received 6 more. Finally, I got permission � two months after submitting the proposal, only to be told by ACT, that the proposed study could not be conducted using the procedure. That means that the original consent form, which had specified a specific procedure for distribution of the survey,will need modification. So, it's back to IRB . . .
I know it's a huge process. That doesn't mean that you don't have to do it.
If so, then please recognize that my phrase: "we will be working toward this" is exactly what I believe you are suggesting: we will be obtaining IRB.
I guess that I've just never seen it done this way -- research conducted prior to obtaining IRB and then seeking IRB after the fact. I recognize that there is a semantics issue here in that you are not terming it research, but we as parents (or at least I, as a parent) do feel like these questions were research into our children's psychological beliefs regarding fixed versus malleable intelligence.
I'll have to look back at the forms we filled out to register our children for talent search, but I do not recall there being any consent forms in there at all. Consent forms generally entail a full explanation of what your children will be doing and the talent search registration forms do not note anything about surveys of beliefs. That's like saying that us filling out school registration forms is the same as filling out a consent form to survey our children on similar items to what they were asked on the EXPLORE.
