Conducting Industrial and Organizational Psychological Research: Institutional Review of Research in Work Organizations

Abstract

Although informed consent is a primary mechanism for insuring the ethical treatment of human participants in research, both federal guidelines and APA ethical standards recognize that exceptions to it are reasonable under certain conditions. But agreement about what constitutes reasonable exceptions to informed consent sometimes is lacking. The research presented the same protocols to samples of respondents drawn from four populations –Institutional Reviewer Board (IRBs) members, managers, employees, and university faculty who were not members of IRBs. Differences in perceptions of IRB members from the other samples with respect to the risks of the protocols without informed consent and on the feasibility of conducting the research in employment organizations are discussed in terms of implications for industrial and organizational psychology research.