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IRB Permission


Before the MISO Survey may be administered on your campus, you must provide either approval or proof of an exemption from your Institutional Review Board (IRB), a committee that must approve the use of human and animal subjects in research. This is a federal requirement and research that has not received such approval cannot be published. You may not run the MISO survey at your institution without first obtaining IRB approval.  The MISO Team provides this template to help you assemble the necessary information for your IRB.  Your MISO Team liaison can also help you navigate the IRB process at your institution.

When applying for approval or exemption from your IRB, include the following information.

Description

The MISO Survey is a web-based quantitative survey designed to measure how faculty, students, and staff view library and computing services in higher education.  The MISO Survey addresses the following research questions:

  • What services and resources are important to our constituents, and how successfully do our organizations deliver them?
  • How effectively do we communicate with our campus communities about our services and resources?
  • How skilled are our constituents in the use of software and library databases? What additional skills do they wish to learn, and how do they wish to learn?
  • Which software and hardware tools do our constituents use, and which of these tools do they own?
  • What roles do our constituents play on campus?  What demographic factors identify them?
  • What benchmarks can be established for excellent delivery of library and computing services?

Results of this study are presented at conferences such as the EDUCAUSE Annual Conference. In addition, study results are shared with members of the CLIR (Council on Library and Information Resources) Chief Information Officers group.

Methodology

This study consists of a Web-based quantitative survey of faculty, students, and staff. At each participating institution, all faculty and staff will be invited to complete the survey.  In addition, approximately 700 students will be randomly selected by Principal Investigator David Consiglio for participation in the survey.

The survey, which will be hosted on the Web at Bryn Mawr College, will include a consent form explaining the purpose of the survey. All participants must provide consent before beginning the survey.  No compensation will be given to any participants.

Faculty, staff, and students will be assured that the survey data will be confidential, though not necessarily anonymous.  Each submitted survey will include the respondent’s identity so that we can identify patterns among the respondent groups.  All data is reported in the aggregate.

David Consiglio will set up all of the survey instruments at Bryn Mawr and will analyze the statistics for each school.  Collected data will reside on a secure server at Bryn Mawr.  The data will only be accessible to David, the server’s administrator, and additional personnel that may be hired to assist with the survey administration.  No person at Bryn Mawr, David Consiglio included, will examine the data at the individual level.

Risk/Benefit Assessment

There are no risks associated with this study. Data is collected only via survey and responses to the survey will be confidential, though not necessarily anonymous. Participation is voluntary.

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