Interview Questions & Consent Forms

Although I won't be conducting my interviews for at least another 15 months, I need to have my interview questions and informed consent forms written soon. These documents are required by the Institutional Review Board, and Fulbright requires that IRB approval for its application. Fulbright's deadline is September 21 and IRB can take a couple months to approve of a study. I would like to have this done before I leave for an overseas summer job in couple of weeks.

I started writing my interview questions about a month ago. My only experience writing research interview questions comes from the Fall 2010 semester when it was required for my qualitative research course. I actually enjoy writing these questions, so I don't find it to be a painful process.

When I first drafted the questions, I wrote them in list form to see how I could organize them for a second draft. After getting very helpful feedback from a professor, I found out that the interview protocol must be written in with the interview for the sake of transparency for IRB. So I revised the questions in a more conversational manner. I kept most questions, eliminated some redundant ones, and combined a few of them.

This process also helped me to better organize the length of the interviews. I never planned on interview each participant once, but I didn't know how many I wanted to do. After revising my questions, I found that 3 meetings for interviewing each participant would be sufficient.

If I need to interview participants, I need to get the informed consent. Each IRB explicitly states what must be included in these consent forms. I just started drafting a template for the consent forms, and they're about 5 pages in length. That's a lot of careful reading on the participants' part.

Drafting a consent form also helped me find the gray areas in my research plan in terms of ethics. I hope to stop by the IRB office next week to shed some light on these gray areas. Once that happens, I will have another professor look over my questions and maybe my consent forms. After that and a subsequent revision, I plan to formally apply for IRB...pending an agreement by my potential affiliate.

Finding the Right Affiliate

I'm about a month into the Fulbright application process and I have run into the first big hurdle, which is learning that my preferred program to be my affiliate is not willing or able to fulfill that role. According to Fulbright's website, an affiliate is "Any body, enterprise, organization, association, or grouping, organized under U.S. or foreign law and based in the United States, a partner country, or third country, one of whose primary purposes is to engage in fundraising or cost-sharing for the benefit of Fulbright Commissions or posts, and which is controlled, directly or indirectly, by an employee, executive director, or board member of a Fulbright Commission or by an officer of a post (or by a spouse)." In my case, my first candidate was an organization organized under foreign law and based in a partner country.

Although I have given up pursuing affiliate #1, I haven't given up on country #1. I have about a handful of contacts left with potential affiliates in country #1. In fact, I'm already establishing contact with my second potential affiliate this week. This one is more promising than the first because the contact has ties with the University of Iowa and has talked with my cognate advisor. Because this contact has a very executive status, I need to prepare a formal letter of request complete with my CV and research proposal.

The first affiliate seemed to be the best fit for my research according to me, two professors, and the Fulbright officer at Iowa, who has just left her post. Unfortunately, no one at Iowa or any of my contacts in country #1 had connections with this affiliate. I suspect that this is a major reason why I failed to secure an affiliation with them.

I'm giving myself one more month to find an affiliate because time will be running short for IRB approval, which is needed for the Fulbright application. Both IRB and Fulbright require an affiliate in the target country of investigation. If I fail to secure an affiliate by early July, then I must postpone my Fulbright plans for another year.