title: Applying the institutional review board data repository approach to manage ethical considerations in evaluating and studying medical education.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  Medical educators and educational researchers continue to improve their processes for managing medical student and program evaluation data using sound ethical principles. This is becoming even more important as curricular innovations are occurring across undergraduate and graduate medical education. Dissemination of findings from this work is critical, and peer-reviewed journals often require an institutional review board (IRB) determination.
  
  
  METHODS
  IRB data repositories, originally designed for the longitudinal study of biological specimens, can be applied to medical education research. The benefits of such an approach include obtaining expedited review for multiple related studies within a single IRB application and allowing for more flexibility when conducting complex longitudinal studies involving large datasets from multiple data sources and/or institutions. In this paper, we inform educators and educational researchers on our analysis of the use of the IRB data repository approach to manage ethical considerations as part of best practices for amassing, pooling, and sharing data for educational research, evaluation, and improvement purposes.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Fostering multi-institutional studies while following sound ethical principles in the study of medical education is needed, and the IRB data repository approach has many benefits, especially for longitudinal assessment of complex multi-site data.
authors.affiliation: Department of Family Medicine, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, OR, USA; thayer@ohsu.edu.
authors.forename: Erin K
authors.initials: EK
authors.lastname: Thayer
authors.affiliation: Department of Family Medicine, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, OR, USA.
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Rathkey
authors.affiliation: Department of Family Medicine, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, OR, USA.
authors.forename: Marissa Fuqua
authors.initials: MF
authors.lastname: Miller
authors.affiliation: Department of Family Medicine, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, OR, USA.
authors.forename: Ryan
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Palmer
authors.affiliation: Department of Medicine, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, OR, USA.
authors.forename: George C
authors.initials: GC
authors.lastname: Mejicano
authors.affiliation: Division of Learning Analytics, Institute for Innovations in Medical Education, NYU School of Medicine, New York, NY, USA.|Department of Emergency Medicine, NYU School of Medicine, New York, NY, USA.
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Pusic
authors.affiliation: Medical Education Outcomes Unit, Program for Medical Education Innovation and Research, NYU School of Medicine, New York, NY, USA.
authors.forename: Adina
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Kalet
authors.affiliation: Division of Evaluation and Outcomes, Institute for Innovations in Medical Education, NYU School of Medicine, New York, NY, USA.|Department of Medicine, Institute for Innovations in Medical Education, NYU School of Medicine, New York, NY, USA.
authors.forename: Colleen
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Gillespie
authors.affiliation: Department of Family Medicine, Oregon Health & Science University, Portland, OR, USA.
authors.forename: Patricia A
authors.initials: PA
authors.lastname: Carney
mesh_terms: D003219:Confidentiality; D016208:Databases, Factual; D004501:Education, Medical; D028744:Ethics Committees, Research / Q000458:organization & administration*; D032984:Ethics, Research; D006801:Humans; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D015397:Program Evaluation; D012107:Research Design
keywords: educational research; ethical review; longitudinal assessment; program evaluation