Researching the Canadian Military: How Many REB's Do We Need?

 Yesterday, I participated at a roundtable consultation with the Social Sciences Research Review Board* [SSRRB], which is DND/CAF's equivalent of a research ethics board.  The meeting was partly to brief us (some profs researching the military, some research ethics board folks) and partly to get our feedback on how things are going and about potential reforms.

*  The SSRB process is essentially run out of the Director General Military Personnel Research and Analysis.  And that was cool to learn since DGMPRA is a partner of the CDSN, with one of its staff, Irina Goldenberg, serving as one of our Co-Directors. 

I would say that this institution, like research ethics boards, are necessary evils for researchers, but they are not evil.  They can be inconvenient, but as one REB participant said, they create necessary friction.  Social science has a history of doing harm to its research subjects--with the most infamous ones being the Milgram experiments and the Stanford Prison experiments.  What is it about psychologists that cause them to be the exemplars for this stuff?  I don't know, but I do know that Carleton has separate REBs for psych versus other social sciences since the former needs more vigilance than the latter.

Part of the challenge of REBs and especially SSRRB is that we hear the horror stories, but do not have a good sense of how much they slow researchers down, how much of that is due to the researchers and how much of that is due to the review process.  I can give you one example that is most trivial that slowed my latest one down: the Carleton REB required me to change my various documents (the consent form I give to my research subjects, for example) to update the new Carleton logo.  Which is, to be clear, utter bullshit since an old logo or a new one has no implications for whether I would be creating risk for the research subjects if they consented to be a research subject (to agree to be interviewed).  But the change did not take me long.  

Anyhow, SSRRB does not have a website!  So, their ability to convey info is not great, so we can borrow from a organization (and CDSN partner) that interacts with SSRRB quite often: CIMVHR! CIMVHR is the Canadian Institute for Military and Veteran Health Research, and while much of their work is on health stuff, which goes to a different board, their members do a lot of social science stuff (more on that below).  So, the CIMVHR website provides much more help for SSRRB than, well, SSRRB does right now:

We encourage all applicants to review the Social Science Research Review Board (SSRRB) requirements before applying; For SSRRB inquiries contact: ssrrb-cerss@forces.gc.ca

So, our first recommendation was for them to get a website!

Anyhow, they explained the process, and it was most relevant as I just had a student face serious challenges.  To get SSRRB approval, one needs an internal sponsor within the CAF or DND.  What is most confusing about this is that it needs to be an L1 organization--which means the Army or the Navy or the Air Force or a command like CANSOF or CJOC.  Does that mean that it needs to be approved by THE L1?  The commander of the Navy, the chief of the army and so forth?  Um, depends on what you are asking?  If you are asking to survey a specific unit, one can perhaps work with someone at the LCol level rather than having the big boss sign off.  The SSRRB folks said that they could help folks find a sponsor, which my student didn't experience.

Why a sponsor and then why are other approvals needed?  The SSRRB folks said this was mostly to prevent survey fatigue and researchers getting in the way of operations, etc.  I did ask about whether this could serve as a veto in the research process since there is language in the documents (from Treasury Board) about the research being in the interests of the organization.  The SSRRB folks insisted this didn't happen, but it is hard to tell if that is the case.  

The big thing in play is that the Arbour Report had a recommendation (#46) specifically focused on this stuff.  Specifically, why should academics have to go through their university REBs and then do it again with SSRB?  They are working on three three options:

1. Allow for concurrent review with academics so that folks don't have to wait and if they get feedback from one system, they can then revise what is in the other.
2. Have SSRRB accept or waive the ethics stuff in their process if a researcher can provide them with a REB certificate from their home institution, and just work on the stuff that is DND/CAF-centric--security/operational issues, whether the research has already been done (lots of internal research that we don't have easy access to), or whether it gets in the way of operations.
3. Collaborative agreements whereby a university's REB and SSRRB agree perhaps to SSRRB essentially be one-stop shopping--that if one gets SSRRB approval, then the home university accepts that as a legit REB approval.  

The idea here for any reform is to make it easier/simpler/quicker for academics.  Grad students and junior faculty do not have a lot of time to go through multiple processes.  So, this is a work in progress, but it does look like things will get easier although perhaps not easy.  Getting a sponsor is not so easy and getting commanders to approve of research in their area of responsibility is tricky as well.  But eliminating duplicative REB processes would be a big improvement.

I mentioned social science above--one of the things that drives me crazy works in a positive way here: a narrow definition of what counts as social science.  In the minds of the SSRRB folks, as far as I can tell, there is a tendency to consider surveys as social science and may be focus group stuff, but not other stuff, which means that other stuff (which really is social science) does not fall into their domain.  So, one can do elite interviews (the stuff I do) since they are "consultations".  One can also do program eval, which don't count as research if worded correctly.  So, either one's REB or SSRRB can help frame a project so that going through SSRRB's approval process is not necessary.  On the other hand, having that stamp of approval is handy for getting commanders to allow pesky academics to have access to subordinates.

So, the big punchlines are: SSRRB may not be as much a gate keeper as folks think, and if they are gate keepers, they are willing to change due to the Arbour report to make things better.  Oh, and there are ways to dodge them.  I still worry about the parts of their procedures that give senior folks in the CAF the ability to veto research, but the practical reality is that one can't do a variety of research projects on the military if  the commander is hostile, whether or not there is a procedure that gives them a veto.

One last thing: DGMPRA have done a lot of studies on personnel issues, so if one is working on that, it is best to approach them and see if a related project may have produced data--they are willing to share data.  Tis what the collaborative agreements are for.