Event Summary
Thursday, April 17, 2 – 3:30 p.m.
Namaste Lounge
About 30 UCSC faculty, staff, and graduate students gathered in Namaste Lounge for the workshop sponsored by Campus + Community and the Office of Research. The goals of the workshop were to:
- Strengthen collaboration between researchers, research administrators, and the IRB by enhancing mutual understanding and communication.
- Discuss common challenges researchers and IRBs face in facilitating community-based/engaged studies and explore potential solutions.
The event showcased a partnership between Campus + Community (C+C) and the Office of Research Compliance Administration (ORCA) that began in fall 2024. Prior to the workshop, Campus + Community released a research brief that identified key pain points for community-engaged scholars in working with the IRB. As part of the considerations, Campus + Community offered the CIRTification training for community partners, designed by the University of Illinois Chicago, could be useful for helping non-UCSC community researchers uphold ethical guidelines and be IRB-sanctioned and approved researchers. ORCA adopted CIRTification in early 2025 and allows community researchers who have completed the training to become investigators on UCSC IRB protocols.
The workshop featured remarks from Campus + Community Faculty Director Rebecca London, Managing Director Ned LeBlond, and IRB Director Sana Khoury-Shakour. Four scholars then shared their experiences of navigating the IRB for their community-engaged projects. Regina Langhout (Professor of Psychology) and Saskias Casanova (Associate Professor of Psychology) focused their remarks on involving student and community youth. Jessica Taft (Professor of Latin American and Latino Studies and Faculty Director of the Dolores Huerta Research Center for the Americas) and Heather Bullock (Professor of Psychology and Faculty Director of the Center for Economic Justice and Action) shared their challenges with and even future possibilities of ethical considerations to develop mutuality through community-engaged research.
A backdrop to the conversation is the recognition that while the IRB review process and community-engaged research share some overlapping values, the details of their focus may differ. The IRB process traditionally centers protecting individual participants and is guided by the Belmont Report principles – respect for person, beneficence, and justice – which apply to all human subjects research, including community-engaged studies. However, community-engaged research often demands a broader ethical lens, as researchers have additional obligations towards their community collaborators, which requires a more holistic approach to ethical considerations in such studies. The following themes emerged from the conversation and will be the subject of ongoing discussions amongst the Bridging Perspectives team.
- IRB requirements may not always align with the cultural, social, or political environments in which community-engaged research occurs. Panelists highlighted challenges related to consent, especially when the research involves children and youth (as subjects or as researchers). However, these concerns are not limited to that population and reflect broader tensions between formal review processes and community realities. In communities that value trusting in-person, slowly evolving and negotiated relationships, transactional consent requirements can get in the way of community engagement. This may particularly be a challenge in instances where the researcher identifies with or comes from that community. Methods for allowing verbal consent were explored as viable alternatives. Panelists and attendees raised the issue of working in international settings where the US-centered consent process would make participants unwilling to engage. IRB representatives clarified that the regulations permit waiving certain requirements – such as the documentation of informed consent – when specific criteria are met and the waiver is deemed appropriate, although this waiver is not automatic or guaranteed.
- In biomedical research, the subject is a person with whom the researcher negotiates for data collection. In community-engaged research, the subject may be a community organization or collective of individuals who have an activist or policy-focused agenda for wanting to conduct research. In these cases, maintaining confidentiality or anonymity of respondents may work against the goals of the community partner(s). The assumption and protections for research participant anonymity may not apply in community-engaged research. It can be difficult to make decisions about this at the start of a project, when an IRB application is submitted.
- There are cases where the protections required by the IRB can create harm or vulnerability for community members or organizations. For example, we learned about cases where the legalistic language required on consent forms and the identification through signature on a consent form can make populations who are fearful of government interaction even more fearful or vulnerable. The legalistic framing also creates a power differential in which local populations must engage with university framings that they find difficult to understand or at odds with their values and cultural practices, thwarting the efforts of researchers who are trying to establish trusting relationships in the community.
- There are entire categories of ethical practice in community engagement that are not within the IRB purview, including return of results – sharing back findings from the research with the community in ways that they can digest and use. Other aspects of ethical community engagement include: establishing trusting and sustainable partnerships, creating partnerships that are reciprocal and mutually beneficial, weighing the risks and benefits of participating in research to the community, creating systems for power-sharing, and many more.
- Workshop participants were most grateful to IRB staff for the assistance and support during their submission, renewal, and modification processes. All agreed that the IRB is minimally staffed, which means they are unable to process protocols as quickly as researchers and communities may need or like. This is especially a problem when undergraduates participate as researchers through their courses. The 10-week quarter does not allow for delays in IRB protocol processing, but it can be the case that the IRB staff simply cannot process protocols as quickly as is necessary for meaningful undergraduate participation.
C+C and ORCA are looking forward to continuing conversations like these to help UCSC faculty, students, and their community partners be more empowered through the research lifecycle. We will continue to help research organizers to navigate through perceived challenges, identify real barriers within the process, and in the coming years to prioritize process improvements on collectively shared impediments to community-engaged research.
Sponsors: Campus + Community and the Office of Research