How it works: one free measure, then the whole plate carried.
We are independent IRB consultants for doctoral studies and capstones at Purdue University Global — the online university for working adults, a separate institution from Purdue University in West Lafayette, with its own board and its own procedures. When you hand us the process, we handle all of it: the determination and the plan, every document, the submission, and every reply to the board until the approval letter exists. The study stays yours; the board's decision is its own.
Short answer
Send whatever exists — a finished packet or a proposal and three half-drafts. We read every document against every other, return a written findings list, and tell you plainly whether the file is clean. If it is, we say "submit it". If it is not, you choose: take the findings and draw it yourself, or hand us the entire process and keep the study.
The free review is the first measure
The board reads one study across several documents — the proposal, the application form, the consent, the recruitment pieces, the site letter. Our first job is to read them the way the board will: every number, every instrument name, every claim about the data, checked in each place it appears. The review costs nothing and commits you to nothing; it exists so that the first person to find a drift is us, not the reviewer, and so that we quote a real file rather than a guess.
What comes back is a written findings list, in three marks. A drift — the same dimension reading two ways, with the places named. A missing element — something the board requires a file to state plainly and this file does not. And clean — the line we hope to use: submit it. A practice that always finds something is a sales letter with calipers; ours is not.
The free review also settles the first question many candidates have not asked yet — whether the project is human-subjects research at all, and if so which review path it belongs on. Those two readings shape everything that follows, and they belong at the start, not after the form is half filled in.
Then the whole plate, in three moves
When you want it handled, the process becomes ours to draw and carry. The three moves are genuinely ordered — the determination shapes the documents, and the documents are what gets submitted and defended — and every file that leaves the practice passes all three of the drafting room's readings before it goes to the board.
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1
The determination and the plan
We read the design as you drew it and settle the category honestly — not human-subjects research, quality improvement, exempt, expedited, full board — against the design itself, not the box you hoped to tick. A comparison group, an instrument you validate, a plan to publish generalizable findings will contradict a quality-improvement claim, and the reviewer reads the design.
Then the plan: which documents the board will read for this study, which dimensions must agree across them, what the site must sign, and that your ethics training — CITI or whatever the university's current handbook names — is current and in the module set your role and design require. You receive it in writing and can file against it yourself if you choose.
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2
Every document, drawn to the same dimensions
The application itself. The consent with every required element — purpose, procedures, risks, benefits, the limits of confidentiality, the right to decline or withdraw, whom to contact — and the right version stamped on it. Recruitment materials exactly as they will run, word for word. Instruments named once and used with those words everywhere. A data-security plan with a name in every answer: where it is stored, who can open it, when identifiers come off, when it is destroyed. Site permission letters drafted for signature so they name the actual data.
Each is prepared to the same dimensions, so the file cannot disagree with itself. Where the university's portal asks for its own form or format, we draw to that form; where this page and the handbook differ, the handbook governs.
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3
Submitted, and every reply answered until approval
We assemble and submit the file, and when the board writes back we answer it — revision responses that address each point on the record, amendments whenever the drawing changes after approval, continuing review when the board calls for it — until the approval letter exists and the datum is set. Data may begin to exist on the right side of that line and not before; holding that edge is part of the work.
Full Handover is the package that carries all three moves; the first two can be taken on their own. The pricing sheet lays out the three packages and how the quote is made — in writing, after the free review, fixed fee, nothing by the hour.
What stays yours, what is ours, what is the board's
Two truths sit at either end of the work and never move: the research is yours, and the board's decision is its own. Everything between them is ours to draw and carry.
| Dimension | Whose it is | What that means in practice |
|---|---|---|
| The study | Yours | The question, the design, the instruments you chose, the data you collect, the analysis, the findings. We do not conduct research or author findings. |
| The determination | Ours to read, the board's to make | We read the design and settle the category honestly; the board's own determination governs and can differ. |
| Every document | Ours to draw, yours to approve | Application, consent, recruitment materials, instruments alignment, data-security plan, site letters for signature — drawn to the same dimensions, shown to you before anything is filed. |
| The submission | Ours, on your word | Assembled and filed in the university's portal in the form it asks for. |
| Every reply | Ours | Revision responses, amendments, continuing review — answered until the approval letter exists. |
| The decision | The board's | No review by this practice changes, predicts or guarantees an outcome. The board's decision is its own. |
When to send it, by where the study is
Before proposal approval. The earliest and the cheapest moment. The proposal's method chapter is the protocol of record that every later document measures from; if the sample, the sites and the instruments are settled there, the file is drawn once. Send the draft proposal and we read it for the dimensions the board will later check.
Approved, IRB not yet filed. The usual moment. Send the approved proposal and whatever documents exist; the free review returns the findings list and the determination, and the three moves begin from there if you want them to.
Returned by the board. Send the return letter with the file. A return is usually a tolerance failure — the same dimension read two ways — and the response has to fix the drawing everywhere it appears, not only the sentence the board quoted. We draw the revision response and, in Full Handover, answer every further reply.
Approved, and something is changing. A new site, a reworded flyer, a revised instrument moves through amendment before it runs. Send the approval letter and the change; we draw the amendment so every document matches the new dimension.
Whatever the stage, the intake sheet takes a name, an email, a phone number, the stage and a note; attachments follow by email once we reply. The questions page answers the things candidates most often ask before they send anything.