Confidence of IRB/REC Members in Their Assessments of Human Research Risk: A Study of IRB/REC Decision Making in Action

Understanding how institutional review boards/research ethics committees (IRBs/RECs) perform risk/benefit assessment is important to help improve their function. In environmental ethics, uncertainty about potential outcomes and the precautionary principle play important roles in regulatory oversight but have received little attention in the context of human research ethics. We carried out an empirical study to gain insight into uncertainty by asking IRB/REC members about confidence in their risk assessments immediately after discussion of new protocols under review. Based on 12 meetings carried out by four IRBs/RECs over a 6-month period, we found a robust, inverse relationship between risk and confidence. As risk increased, confidence decreased. We detected different patterns of consensus between different IRBs/RECs and their members. Our study introduces a novel and relatively easy to implement approach to begin to understand IRB/REC decision making in real time that can be used within or across institutions.