RES 6541 Module 4 IRB Application Narrative Example

Protecting Instructors Who Talk About a Hard First Semester: The IRB Application Narrative for a Qualitative Study of Part-Time Clinical Faculty

Student Name

American College of Education

RES6541: Finalizing the Dissertation Proposal

Module 4 Assignment

Instructor Name

November 2, 2026

Introduction

An institutional review board does not judge whether a study is interesting; it judges whether participants are protected. The application narrative is where a researcher shows that every risk has been noticed and answered. My study asks nurses who teach students part time on hospital units, in bachelor's programs across Kentucky, to describe their first semester of clinical teaching, including what made it harder. Some will describe mistakes, conflicts with unit staff or doubts about continuing. This paper drafts the narrative sections of the IRB application for that study, following the order most application forms use.

Plain-Language Summary

This study will learn how nurses who teach nursing students part time on hospital units experience their first semester in that role, and what helps or makes it harder. About 12 to 15 instructors will each take part in one video interview lasting about an hour, and some will be invited to review a short summary of the findings afterward. The results will help nursing programs improve how they prepare and support new clinical instructors.

Procedures

Participants complete a five-question eligibility form, review the consent document and, if they agree, schedule an interview at a time they choose. Interviews take place over a secure video platform licensed for research use, with only audio recorded; participants may keep their cameras off. In keeping with the study's qualitative descriptive design, which stays close to participants' own accounts (Sandelowski, 2000), a semi-structured guide asks about expectations before the semester, the first weeks on the unit, relationships with unit staff, supervising students, moments that felt difficult and moments when something or someone helped. Recordings are sent to a professional transcription service bound by a confidentiality agreement. About two months after the interviews, participants who agree will receive a two-page summary of themes and may comment on whether it reflects their experience. No other procedures are involved.

Recruitment

Leaders at six bachelor's programs in the state, not including my own, will forward an IRB-approved invitation to their part-time clinical instructors. The invitation directs interested instructors to contact me directly, so that program leaders do not learn who responded. No follow-up message will come from a program leader, and the invitation states that the program will not know who takes part. Eligible participants supervised students on hospital units during their first full academic term of clinical teaching, which ended within the past twelve months.

Risks

Two risks are more than minimal in the sense that they deserve specific protection. The first is exposure to an employer. A part-time instructor who describes struggling, criticizes the program or mentions leaving could face consequences if the account were traced back. Because a program may have only a handful of new clinical instructors in a given year, a quotation that mentions a specialty, a hospital or a distinctive event could identify a person even without a name. The protections for this risk are described under confidentiality below. The second risk is emotional discomfort. Describing a difficult semester may bring back distress, especially if a student made an error or a patient was harmed. The interview guide lets participants decide how much detail to give, the interviewer will pause or stop if a participant becomes upset, and every participant will receive a list of support resources, including employee assistance programs and professional peer support lines. A third, smaller risk is the inconvenience of an hour's time.

Benefits

Participants are not expected to benefit directly, although some may find it useful to reflect on their first semester. The expected benefit to others is knowledge that programs can use to improve orientation and support for new clinical instructors, which may in turn improve students' clinical learning. The risks described above are reasonable in relation to that benefit because they are modest and specifically managed.

Informed Consent

Consent is obtained in two steps. Participants read an electronic consent document and indicate agreement before scheduling. At the start of the interview, before recording begins, I summarize the key points, confirm that the participant still agrees and remind them that they may pass over any question or end the interview whenever they wish, without giving a reason. The consent document uses plain wording aimed at roughly an eighth-grade reader and explains the purpose, procedures, risks, protections, voluntary nature, the right to withdraw data up until analysis begins and how to reach me, my chair and the IRB. Because participants are adults acting in a professional capacity and no deception is involved, a waiver of documentation of consent is requested so that participants do not need to sign a form that links their name to the study.

Confidentiality and Reporting

Each participant chooses or is assigned a pseudonym, and the key linking pseudonyms to contact information is stored separately from transcripts and destroyed after member checking. Names of programs, hospitals, units, cities and colleagues are removed from transcripts during checking against the recording. In reporting, quotations will be edited where needed to remove identifying details, a practice that requires judgment about how much context can be kept without exposing anyone (Saunders et al., 2015). Demographic information will be reported only in aggregate ranges, and no table will link a pseudonym to a program size or specialty. Participants will be told in the consent document that, despite these steps, someone who knows them well might recognize an account, and can weigh what to share accordingly.

Data Management

Audio files are stored on an encrypted drive and deleted once transcripts have been checked. De-identified transcripts, the reflexive journal and the analysis files are stored on encrypted college cloud storage protected by two-factor authentication and kept for five years after the study ends, then destroyed. Only I, my chair and, for transcripts only, the peer debriefer will have access.

Compensation, Position and Review Category

Participants who complete an interview receive a $30 electronic gift card, an amount meant to acknowledge their time without being large enough to pressure anyone into taking part. As a nurse educator who supervises part-time instructors at my own program, I have a professional interest in the topic; excluding my own program removes any supervisory relationship with participants, and a reflexive journal will record how my experience shapes the interviews (Berger, 2015). Because the study involves only interviews with adults about their professional experience, I am requesting review under the exempt category for interview research, recognizing that the IRB determines the category and may require limited review because recordings are kept until transcripts are checked.

Withdrawal and Incidental Disclosures

Two situations need rules set in advance. If a participant withdraws after the interview but before analysis begins, the recording and transcript will be deleted and the participant's words will not appear in any report; after analysis begins, withdrawal remains possible, but coded material already pooled into themes cannot be fully separated, and the consent document says so plainly. The second situation is an incidental disclosure, for example a participant describing a patient safety event that was never reported. The study does not ask about such events, and I am not acting as anyone's supervisor in the interview. The consent document explains that I will not report what participants say to their programs or employers, with the narrow exceptions required by law, and that participants may choose not to describe identifiable events at all.

Conclusion

The narrative identifies two meaningful risks, exposure to an employer and emotional distress, and answers each with specific protections: recruitment that keeps programs unaware of who responds, de-identification and careful reporting of quotations, a pause-and-support protocol and a two-step consent process. With these sections drafted, Module 5 assembles the final proposal.

References

Berger, R. (2015). Now I see it, now I don't: Researcher's position and reflexivity in qualitative research. Qualitative Research, 15(2), 219-234. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468794112468475

Sandelowski, M. (2000). Whatever happened to qualitative description? Research in Nursing & Health, 23(4), 334-340. https://doi.org/10.1002/1098-240X(200008)23:4<334::AID-NUR9>3.0.CO;2-G

Saunders, B., Kitzinger, J., & Kitzinger, C. (2015). Anonymising interview data: Challenges and compromise in practice. Qualitative Research, 15(5), 616-632. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468794114550439