The Recruitment of Students as Research Subjects

• Instructors are not allowed to directly recruit/enroll their students in their research and must use a research assistant who will retain the consent documents until the end of the semester. If consent forms are going to be used for grading purposes (i.e. ascribing extra credit) then the research assistant should retain the consent forms until final grades are to be submitted.
• If extra credit is given for student participation in research, the instructor must provide an alternate assignment for those students who choose not to participate.
• The alternative assignment should meet some basic standards to ensure that students are not unduly influenced to participate in research. Faculty and staff should make every effort to ensure that they do not exert undue influence on students to participate in research rather than the alternative assignment. Clearly describe the alternative assignment in a way and at a time that allows the students to make an informed choice about which method they will use to earn credit.

The Alternative Assignment description should be:

• Clear and complete
• Written and published (and provided to students in the subject pool)
• Available at the time when the research option is described
• To assure issues of fairness and justice, the alternative assignment should require approximately the same time and effort commitment as research participation.

Voluntary participation with informed consent is a basic principle for all research involving human subjects. To minimize coercion, the CUNY UI IRB requires that the Investigator to do the following:

• Subjects must be informed that research participation will not negatively impact academic status or grades.
• Investigators should clearly identify and inform student subjects of the differences between research activities (that benefit the investigator) versus student learning outcomes (that benefit the student)
• Investigators should adhere to federal guidelines and CUNY HRPP Polices and Procedures regarding human subjects research.

Principal Investigators should also adhere to the ethical principles for the protection of human subjects in research as set forth in the Belmont Report of the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research (1979).

These ethical principles are:

• Respect for persons – which includes the requirement of a voluntary informed consent process
• Beneficence – which entails an obligation to protect persons from harm by minimizing risks and maximizing benefits
• Justice – which requires that selection of subjects be fair and equitable and that particular care be taken when working with populations (i.e. children, decision impaired) whose status puts them in a vulnerable position.