Office for Research Protections | Institutional Review Board (IRB)
February 20, 2024
We are happy to share the results of the latest HRPP satisfaction survey, which was conducted in October 2023 and analyzed through the CTSI’s Biostatistics, Epidemiology, and Research Design Core. This survey was a follow-up to the 2022 survey, which measured satisfaction following the HRPP transformation. The surveys aimed to measure the research community’s level of satisfaction with the services and support provided by the HRPP.
Key Findings
- Across the University, 78% of respondents indicated that they are either very satisfied or satisfied with their current overall service from the HRPP; this includes College of Medicine, University Park, and the Commonwealth campuses.
- Universal satisfaction has improved since the last survey. Previously, satisfaction varied by study role and number of protocols, but since the initial survey, satisfaction is distributed more broadly across all researchers.
- Principal investigator satisfaction has improved since the last survey.
Additional Feedback
Through this survey, we learned that your greatest concerns are the consistency of reviews and turnaround time. These are priorities for our IRB leadership and a concern for most IRB offices, and we are constantly working to improve them. To address consistency concerns, we have developed an internal quality assurance program that systematically assesses individual reviews and provides feedback and training to the reviewers. We have also implemented a group review training process that allows our analysts to share their perspectives and best practices on how protocols are reviewed and how clarifications are requested.
Even though we have solid satisfaction around timelines, we know that moving through the IRB process quickly is always a goal, and we are continuing to work on both internal and external ways to address that. We are continuing our collaboration with ancillary review offices to streamline those processes and reduce duplication of efforts. The completeness of submissions also impacts turnaround times, and we encourage users to attend our CATS IRB and protocol trainings, particularly for first-time submission. We have also enacted some process changes to reduce unnecessary submissions, such as the updates to what constitutes an RNI.
We understand that you go to our website and guides most often for information. This year we will be working on updating the website in hopes of making it more user-friendly. We are pleased that many of you are finding the quarterly webinars useful and informative. We encourage you to join us for the next one, which will be on April 24, 2024 at noon. Register here, or visit our website for a summary of past webinars.
We thank everyone for their participation in the survey. We value your feedback and input, as it helps us continue to improve as we work with you to ensure the highest ethical standards and quality of human subjects research.
The HRPP would also like to thank the CTSI and the Survey Research Center for their assistance with both surveys.