You have two very accessible options. First, prepare a lit review that examines how the problem has been handled by other researchers. Second, your IRB submission was reviewed by full committee give them the lit review and ask them if you can present your case to them. IRB's like every other group of people tend to take a conservative route when presented with something new to them...show them that the issue is not totally new, that others have decided it differently, and then be willing to answer their questions...that will go along way. Lois On Sat, Oct 16, 2010 at 7:44 PM, Johnson, Thomas J < tom.johnson@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:
A master's student I am working with was told by the Human Subjects Committee that in doing a textual analysis of indie music blogs that she could not list the name of the blog but had to use pseudonyms. Has any heard of this before? They are public sites after all and their content is easily searchable. If you were coding newspapers you wouldn't need to identify them as newspaper A or B. I think it is crazy, but wanted to hear what you think. _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
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-- Lois Ann Scheidt Doctoral Candidate - School of Library and Information Science, Indiana University, Bloomington IN USA Webpage: http://www.loisscheidt.com CV: http://www.loisscheidt.com/cv.html Blog: http://www.professional-lurker.com