Institutional Review Board
Bucknell is committed to safeguarding the welfare, rights and privacy of all persons who participate as subjects in research projects conducted under its auspices and to ensuring that the subjects of such research are aware of the rights and the protections available to them.
Bucknell's Institutional Review Board (IRB) reviews all proposed research involving human subjects at Bucknell or using Bucknell students, personnel, facilities or data.
Ethical Safeguards
Bucknell's research safeguards derive from an effort to demonstrate respect for persons, beneficence and justice in the practice of human subjects research. These ethical principles were first articulated in the Belmont Report issued by the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research in 1979.
The Institutional Review Board
Bucknell's Institutional Review Board is the body charged with reviewing and approving all proposed research involving human subjects, whether funded or not, conducted under the auspices of Bucknell University by its faculty, students or staff or by outside investigators using Bucknell University students, personnel or facilities or data collected at the University.
"Research" is defined in the Code of Federal Regulations as any "systematic investigation, including research development, testing and evaluation, designed to develop or contribute to generalizable knowledge" (45 CFR §46.102(l)).
Research subject to review thus includes but is not limited to pilot studies, honors theses, Master's theses, Ph.D. dissertations, class projects or independent research aimed for publication, whether such research takes place on or off the Bucknell University campus (including work done outside the United States), as long as this research involves human subjects or data derived therefrom.
For questions regarding the Institutional Review Board, please contact Eric Kennedy, IRB Chair, at 570-577-2013 or irbchair@bucknell.edu.