5. Do all schools need to obtain IRB approval? What if our school doesn’t have an IRB? In order to comply with increasingly complex and stringent regulations regarding research using human subjects, every school is required to obtain IRB approval. A “master” IRB approval at the University of Michigan governs the larger study and its protocols. This is shared with schools, along with template forms for submitting materials at your campus. Typically, campus IRBs will grant approval without many problems given the previous approval of a “master” IRB for the project. If your school does not have an IRB, you will be asked to submit written approval for participation in the HMS from your senior student affairs officer, senior academic officer, or person designated by institutional policy to approve such studies.
6. What work will we have to do on our end in order to join the study? HMS will supply you with a dedicated School Coordinator to answer questions and guide you through the participation requirements—such as securing IRB approval, selecting a sample, and customizing respondent customizations. Though you are still responsible for completing preparations on your campus, our expertise and service will expedite and streamline the process. SSG also provides comprehensive respondent support, a customized sample management system, and daily response-rate monitoring during data collection. These services spare you the burden of administering the survey.
7. By participating, what does our school take away in the end? Each participating school will receive an analytic dataset and a summary benchmark report. We will assist schools as needed in interpreting results.
8. What if our campus would like to do further analysis or a different analysis than what is provided by the HMS? We encourage schools to conduct additional analyses of their data. Each institution will receive their complete dataset (delivered as an SPSS file) in addition to their HMS report. We will happy to answer any questions you have about the data set.