Measuring the Quality and Performance of Institutional Review Boards

Despite the importance of institutional review boards (IRBs) in protecting human subjects participating in research and the well-known benefits of performance measurements, there has been no systematic assessment of the quality and performance of IRBs. The IRB community has frequently cited the lack...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of empirical research on human research ethics 2019-07, Vol.14 (3), p.187-189
Main Author: Tsan, Min-Fu
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Bioethics
Quality
Review boards
Special Section: Quality and Performance of IRBs/RECs
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Summary:Despite the importance of institutional review boards (IRBs) in protecting human subjects participating in research and the well-known benefits of performance measurements, there has been no systematic assessment of the quality and performance of IRBs. The IRB community has frequently cited the lack of credible metrics for measuring human subject protections and the quality of IRB ethics reviews as reasons for not measuring the quality and performance of IRBs. However, the IRB, with its well-defined missions, functions, structure, and procedures, should be readily amendable to performance measurements. In this brief commentary, I analyzed potential barriers for measuring the quality of IRBs and proposed ways to overcome these barriers.
ISSN:1556-2646
1556-2654
DOI:10.1177/1556264618804686