Research using Students/Employees FAQ

Q. My research project requires that I collect data from or about my students/employees. Can I proceed as usual or are there special precautions that are needed?

A. Added precautions are required to ensure that recruitment is not and does not appear to be coercive. In fact, researchers are strongly discouraged from using students/employees as research subjects.

Q. What qualifies someone as a student?

A. Any person enrolled or likely to be enrolled in the near future in classes or seminars of the investigator, OR

• Any person being advised, mentored or supervised by the investigator or who has the investigator on their advisory committee
• If there is no other subject population that would be suitable, then the following conditions must be fulfilled to meet federal regulations on potentially vulnerable populations:
• Recruitment for the study, distribution and collection of the material must be made by a third party
• For student research third party status does not include: Members of the investigator’s laboratory, Teaching assistants for the course
• Recruitment must be delayed
• Recruitment by the third party should begin after all grades for the course or series of courses have been submitted or the students have graduated

As an alternative to delayed recruitment, for research on students, delayed data analysis may be acceptable: It is possible to use materials collected during the course but only after the students have received their grade or graduated from the program.

Q. What qualifies someone as an employee?

A. Any person who receives a regular paycheck or other form of reimbursement from the investigator or the supervisors of the investigator,

or

Any person who has applied for a position with the investigator or subordinate of the investigator.

If there is no other subject population that would be suitable, then the following conditions must be met to meet federal regulations on potentially vulnerable populations:

• Recruitment for the study, distribution and collection of the material must be made by a third party
• For employee research third party status does not include:
• Co-workers of equivalent rank who report to the investigators
• Co-workers who report to the investigators’ superior
• Human Resources personnel
• The employee population must be sufficiently large that anonymous surveys cannot be linked with individual respondents.

Final Notes

Because of the requirement for anonymity for both student/employee research, specific types of research do not meet federal guidelines, including but not necessarily limited to, interviews, including interviews by a third party that would be audio taped or video taped, focus groups, surveys containing identifiers or surveys in a population of insufficient size to guarantee anonymity.