Hello - I have a student conducting a thesis on the communicative behavior in online games (one will be a U.S. game such as Everquest and another will be a Chinese game). She would like to conduct participant observation. We are having difficulties with our IRB (Committee that approves research on Human Subjects), primarily because players may be children. Research that involves children requires parental consent. Another problem is that the IRB at my university does not have experience with this type of research, and so they don't have models to draw on (or to guide us). I am interested in hearing from anyone who has been able to gain approval for this type of research - your help is much appreciated - mj Michele H. Jackson, PhD Dept of Communication University of Colorado Boulder, CO 80309-0270 303-492-8139 jackson@colorado.edu http://comm.colorado.edu/mjackson