Institutional permission/approval for usability testing?

[Jarvis, Hugh]

Like Amy, we do not request IRB approval, similarly because we only use the information internally to improve our web projects.

Sometimes we do record using Camtasia, and we do tally names, gender, age cohort, and academic/professional field in our rough notes.  That insures we have a decent spread of subjects among the various age/gender/disciplinary persuasion and that we can quickly refer back to an individual study if needed, should additional tests surface a new factor to which we hadn’t been paying close attention.

However none of these personal identifying details make it into our formal reports except as a rough tabulation to show we didn’t just speak to a very narrow population.

We feel very comfortable with this approach, since our research goal is not to study people’s behavior, per se, and we have no intention of publicly disclosing the information we gather except in aggregate, without identifying details, and then only to internal clients.   If we speak about our work at professional conferences, we only mention these studies in very general terms.

I work out of our marketing and publications office, so I can’t speak for our central libraries’ practice.

Cheers,
                Hugh

Hugh Jarvis (PhD, MLS)
Cybrarian, University Communications
330 Crofts Hall ~ University at Buffalo
Buffalo, NY USA  14260-7015
ph: 716- 645-4604  fax: 716-645-6969
email: hjarvis at buffalo.edu<mailto:hjarvis at buffalo.edu> (preferred)

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From: Amy Vecchione [mailto:amyvecchione at BOISESTATE.EDU]
Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2014 6:01 PM
Subject: Re: Institutional permission/approval for usability testing?

Hello,

At Boise State if the data is for internal review only we did not need to obtain an IRB, but we did document the testing with a form acknowledging that it was for internal review only.

Now we have just completed a very large undertaking of usability testing including something like 10 different scripts and other types of data acquisition so that we CAN write about it. We do not obtain any identifying information nor demographic information so no one can be identified for their information.

I've written a number of IRBs at my institution, so I've learned what they need and don't need.

Thanks,

Amy

Amy Vecchione, Digital Access Librarian/Associate Professor
http://works.bepress.com/amy_vecchione/
Albertsons Library, Boise State University, L212
http://library.boisestate.edu<http://library.boisestate.edu/>
(208) 426-1625

On Wed, Oct 22, 2014 at 2:17 PM, Ken Varnum <varnum at umich.edu<mailto:varnum at umich.edu>> wrote:
We [University of Michigan Library] applied for and obtained blanket IRB approval for that informal usability studies, though our definition of informal may include the recording of subjects.


--
Ken Varnum | Web Systems Manager | University of Michigan Library
varnum at umich.edu<mailto:varnum at umich.edu> | @varnum | 734-615-3287<tel:734-615-3287>
http://www.lib.umich.edu/users/varnum

On Mon, Oct 20, 2014 at 4:24 PM, Alexander Sonsteby <Alexander.Sonsteby at metrostate.edu<mailto:Alexander.Sonsteby at metrostate.edu>> wrote:

Hi, all,



I am writing to ask how many of your libraries have sought institutional review board (IRB)/human subject review board (HSRB) approval to conduct informal usability testing on your libraries' websites. By "informal" I mean that you don't record your test subjects, track their names or other personal identifiers (like student ID numbers) in a database, etc.



I realize that this may be a sensitive topic for some, so feel free to write me off-list if you prefer.



Thank you,

Alec


Alec Sonsteby, M.S.
Associate Professor and Reference & Instruction Librarian

(O) 651.793.1636<tel:651.793.1636>
(F) 651.793.1615<tel:651.793.1615>
alexander.sonsteby at metrostate.edu<mailto:alexander.sonsteby at metrostate.edu>

Metropolitan State University
645 East Seventh Street
Saint Paul, Minnesota 55106

www.metrostate.edu/library<http://www.metrostate.edu/library>
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