Researchers are required to approve all the research documents prior to use. It takes approximately two months for IRB approval. It is advisable to fill up the IRB form as soon as the contract is finalised. The IRB form provided by the BRAC JPGSPH can be found here. Please ensure the following points before submitting the IRB form:
Attach the Ethics Certificate¹ for all key personnel involved in the study while emailing the IRB form to the IRB representatives. If an Ethics Certificate is not available, please consider the Human Research Protection Training² to complete the training on Research Ethics & Protecting Human Research Participants, which is absolutely free. This course is provided by the US Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) Office for Human Research Protections (OHRP). OHRP offers this training for the research community on human research protections. This course comprises five lessons and each might take approximately an hour, on average, to complete. A printable completion certificate is available at the conclusion of each lesson for your records which should be compiled together in a PDF form which can be used as an Ethics Certificate for IRB submission at BRAC JPGSPH.
Educational background, employment history, personal statement, list of ongoing research protocols, completed research protocols (with role and date) and; types and number of publications (economics/non-economics paper) should be included in the Biography of the Investigators section of the form.
Informed consent form and assent form (if relevant) in both English and Bangla should be included in the form. The consent form must seek participant/caregiver’s signature for their participation. Find the template for Informed Consent Form here (provided by BRAC JPGSPH).
There should be a separate guideline mentioned for Quantitative and Qualitative Interview in the IRB form in both English and Bangla.
Both English and Bangla survey questionnaires must be included in the IRB form.
Read our data protection protocol here. Contact Md Abdul Awal for more information.
A work plan with a clear timeline (month/year) of the project piloting, training, survey follow ups, submission of baseline/endline reports, etc is required in the Work Plan section of the IRB form.
Upon completion of the IRB form, send the PDF version of the form to the internal PI and seek approval and e-signature, followed by an email approval request to the Head of the institution (Imran Matin, PhD) and collect the e-signature from his assistant, Masafi Mustafa Haider.
The completed IRB form should be submitted in both PDF (with e-signatures) and word format (without e-signature) along with the Ethics Certificates to all key personnel to Md Sahidur Rahman (Associate IRB & Grant Management, BRAC JPGSPH) at sahidur.rahman@bracu.ac.bd.
