Thinking/writing within and outside the IRB box

Ethical disruptions of data in qualitative research

Abstract

Prompted by shared discussions about our doctoral research, this paper focuses on two tensions we identified when applying to our university’s Institutional Review Board (IRB). The first tension relates to our discomfort with the assumptions about research participants as articulated in the IRB application. We detail how one of us sought to work with/in but also outside of the constraints we discuss. The second tension takes us into a more experimental space. We write ‘outside’ of the IRB boxes as a form of critique, but also as a way to produce more affirmative ways of thinking about what else can be thought and done within university IRB structures. We focus in particular on the ways that “data” is contained within IRB boxes. We conclude by offering some additional questions that this process of thinking/writing together have generated.