Is community-based research hindered by the institutional review board? A critical case study

The Institutional Review Board (IRB) was created to protect human research subjects. In community-based research, the IRB protections can inhibit centering the voices and experiences of community members themselves. This paper centers on a year-long IRB review for a community-based research project where the authors attempted to center community members’ experiences and use student researchers. Ultimately, the authors decided not to pursue the research through the IRB and become consultants for the nonprofit instead. The authors of this paper adopt a critical lens as they discuss how risk aversion, paternalism, and epistemic injustice work against community-based research and offer potential solutions for IRBs and researchers to use in the future.