Principal Investigators' Priorities and Perceived Barriers and Facilitators When Making Decisions About Conducting Essential Research in the COVID-19 Pandemic.

At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, stay-at-home orders disrupted normal research operations. Principal investigators (PIs) had to make decisions about conducting and staffing essential research under unprecedented, rapidly changing conditions. These decisions also had to be made amid other substantial work and life stressors, like pressures to be productive and staying healthy. Using survey methods, we asked PIs funded by the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation (N = 930) to rate how they prioritized different considerations, such as personal risks, risks to research personnel, and career consequences, when making decisions. They also reported how difficult they found these choices and associated symptoms of stress. Using a checklist, PIs indicated those factors in their research environments that made their decisions easier (i.e., facilitators) or more difficult (i.e., barriers) to make. Finally, PIs also indicated how satisfied they were with their decisions and management of research during the disruption. Descriptive statistics summarize PIs' responses and inferential tests explore whether responses varied by academic rank or gender. PIs overall reported prioritizing the well-being and perspectives of research personnel, and they perceived more facilitators than barriers. Early-career faculty, however, rated concerns about their careers and productivity as higher priorities compared to their senior counterparts. Early-career faculty also perceived greater difficulty and stress, more barriers, fewer facilitators, and had less satisfaction with their decisions. Women rated several interpersonal concerns about their research personnel more highly than men and reported greater stress. The experience and perceptions of researchers during the COVID-19 pandemic can inform policies and practices when planning for future crises and recovering from the pandemic.

What Can IRBs Learn From CABs? A Qualitative Analysis of the Experiences of Recruitment and Training of Nonscientist Members on Research Review Boards.

Governments, funders, and institutional policies increasingly encourage and even mandate the involvement of nonscientists in the ethical review of research, most famously in institutional review boards (IRBs), but also on community advisory boards (CABs) and other committees that contribute to research governance. In spite of these requirements, few have examined how different factors such as recruitment strategies, training, and different qualifications shape the contributions of nonscientists to the research enterprise. This pilot study begins to fill in this lacuna by interviewing nonscientist members of IRBs and community members of CABs. Results suggest patterned differences in demographics, recruitment strategies, training, and perceived qualifications between community members on these two types of boards with potential implications for how we perceive the scope of contributions that nonscientists can provide to the ethical review of research and the strategic ways these contributions can be elicited.