At a recent meeting of writing instructors, we learned that students who conduct surveys for freshman composition courses are potentially violating campus policies regarding human research. Some have received warning letters from our campus' Human Research Committee. This surprised me, mostly because I have never encountered this issue before in my own education, and also because -- as a literary critic -- I find it difficult to think of "discourse" as "human research."

"Human Research" is a phrase torn right out of policy guides from Psychology and Biology programs at research institutions across the country. When I think of "human research," I think of scientists in white lab coats, probing various regions of the brain with electrodes, or drug experiments using prisoners...not a simple survey regarding, say, student attitudes about the role of athletics in education. Isn't the latter protected speech? If a person is asked a question for a research paper, and told that this is the context under which their speech is being recorded, isn't answering the questions themselves a sort of "informed consent"?

The lines between "human research" and journalistic inquiry are fuzzy to me. A student's journalistic inquiry would seem protected by the First Amendment, but if a student is "experimenting" -- testing a hypothesis -- then perhaps it is not.

I turned to the US Dept of Health and Human Services, whose guidelines seem to shape the human research policies at many academic institutions. The way the HHS defines a "human subject" sheds some light on the difference:

(f) Human subject means a living individual about whom an investigator (whether professional or student) conducting research obtains

(1) data through intervention or interaction with the individual, or
(2) identifiable private information.

Intervention includes both physical procedures by which data are gathered (for example, venipuncture) and manipulations of the subject or the subject's environment that are performed for research purposes. Interaction includes communication or interpersonal contact between investigator and subject. Private information includes information about behavior that occurs in a context in which an individual can reasonably expect that no observation or recording is taking place, and information which has been provided for specific purposes by an individual and which the individual can reasonably expect will not be made public (for example, a medical record). Private information must be individually identifiable (i.e., the identity of the subject is or may readily be ascertained by the investigator or associated with the information) in order for obtaining the information to constitute research involving human subjects.

I understand that privacy matters, and in cases where the "experiment" involves intervention or observation, then I can see the need to acquire "informed consent" -- a signature from the "test subject" that they understand the context of the survey and are okay with participating in it. And naturally, any private information acquired by a researcher needs to be kept private. But such policies also sound a bit too bureaucratic for a simple freshman composition course, where the "research" will likely never be published. Often it's simply an innocent trial run at data gathering for the sake of writing a paper for a class -- a class that is not housed in the sciences. Should the freshmen who wants to, say, interview ten peers on their dorm floor utilize clipboards and acquire signatures to protect themselves (and the university)?

Most "human research" policies I've seen online govern graduate scholarship. The University of Texas' School of Journalism provides a well-written page that clarifies the line between journalistic research and other forms of human research, and outlines what their school considers "exempt" forms of human research. Of note:

1. Journalistic investigations, the work done by a person writing a biography, and documentaries.

2. Studies conducted by students in conjunction with a class may or may not be research. If the purpose for conducting the study is solely to give the student experience in conducting research, the project is a research practicum project and not, in and of itself, research.

I like the way they put that: "a research practicum project." That's how I would define what my freshmen composition students might be doing, if they opt to conduct a survey or interview on any given paper topic. However, as UTexas is quick to note, such a practicum needs to be overseen by faculty, and some compliance forms (the forms I looked at were six pages long) need to be submitted to a governing board.

Now that I'm a little better informed on this topic, I will contact our own Human Research Committee and acquire whatever forms a student might need. Better safe than sorry.

And I'll keep looking into it. I'm suddenly riddled with questions. When I teach "memoir writing" to what degree am I "intervening" with human subjects when I grade their personal essays and confessional writing? It's not research that I would ever report, but I wonder to what degree I am treading on fuzzy privacy matters as a teacher when it comes to grading my "human subjects"? Should I get a student's "informed consent" to participate in a class where they are expected to share their life stories with me and with other classmates? To what degree does "creative non-fiction" bring the fuzziness of language and discourse theory into play regarding these issues?

Does anyone reading this have experience with human research violations in a writing course? What are your thoughts about this issue?

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