IRB process for practitioners in ABA: three workarounds for BCBAs

There are three real workarounds for the IRB problem in private ABA practice: stand up your own research review committee (RRC) inside your clinic, partner with a university through an academic you already know, or join two or three small clinics together to share one RRC. An IRB is an institutional review board. It is the group that signs off on a study before any data gets used for publication. Most BCBAs (board certified behavior analysts) think you need a university job to get one. You do not. This page walks each of the three paths, in plain language, so you can pick the one that fits your clinic this year.

What an IRB actually does (and why an RRC counts)#

An IRB has one job. It looks at a research plan and decides if the people in the study are protected. It checks consent. It checks that the risk is fair given the benefit. It checks the data plan. That is it. A university has an IRB because federal funding rules say it must. Your clinic does not have one because your clinic does not take federal research money. That is the only reason.

A research review committee (RRC) does the same job. It looks at the plan, checks the protections, and signs off. Journals accept work cleared by an RRC the same way they accept work cleared by a university IRB. The name is different. The work is the same. If you are already a BCBA running clean clinical protocols, you are most of the way there.

Workaround 1: stand up your own research review committee#

The first path is the one almost no public page talks about. You build the RRC inside your own practice. Dr. Peterson says it straight:

The first thing I will share with you is that you can establish what's called, it's not an institutional review board. It's a research review committee or an RRC, and you can establish that in practice. From the talk — Dr. Stephanie Peterson

There is a published playbook for this. The paper by LeBlanc, Nosik, and Petursdottir lays out how a human service agency builds an RRC from scratch. You set membership rules. You write a charter. You set a meeting cadence. You document review. The committee usually has a BCBA, a person not tied to the study, and one outside voice. The Trumpet Behavioral Health RRC is the model most practice groups copy.

If you already run a quality plan, much of the scaffolding is already in your clinic. You have consent forms. You have data privacy rules. You have a peer review habit. Wrapping that into a charter is paperwork, not invention. Plan on one full quarter to write the documents, pick the members, and run a first mock review.

Workaround 2: partner with a university through an academic, not the IRB#

The second path is the one people try first and get burned by. Cold-emailing a university IRB chair almost never works. The chair has no incentive to cover a study from outside the university. Dr. Peterson is honest about why this path fails:

my experience is that you're probably not going to have much success if you just go into the university and say, I want to run my project. But if you're partnering with an academic, um, maybe a student or somebody that has an affiliation to the university, it's, it's more likely to be good and fine. From the talk — Dr. Stephanie Peterson

The shift is small but important. You do not ask the IRB for cover. You ask an academic to be a co-investigator. Then that academic puts the study through their own IRB as the principal investigator. The IRB sees an internal faculty member running a study. The paperwork flows the normal way. You bring the clinical data and the BCBA expertise. They bring the IRB seat and, usually, a writing partner.

Where do you find the academic? Start with people you already know. Your masters program faculty. The BCBA who ran your supervision group. Conference speakers whose talks you remember. A doctoral student looking for applied data is often the easiest yes. Their advisor signs as senior author, the IRB clears it, and you ship the study together.

Workaround 3: form a shared RRC across two or three small clinics#

The third path is the one most BCBAs have never heard of. Two or three small clinics pool resources and stand up one RRC that covers all of them. Dr. Peterson saw this in workshops:

they've actually made the connections where two or three smaller organizations will get together and form an RRC that oversees the, the, the three organizations. From the talk — Dr. Stephanie Peterson

Why this works when a solo RRC feels too heavy: the cost of a charter, a meeting cadence, and a quorum gets split three ways. You also get the outside voice built in. A reviewer from clinic A reviewing a study from clinic B is a real arms-length check. The journal will see that. So will the BACB (Behavior Analyst Certification Board) if it ever asks how the research was reviewed.

The setup is a one-page memo between the clinic owners, a shared charter, and a rotating chair. One meeting a month. Twenty minutes per study on average. The clinics keep their own consent forms and their own data. The RRC just rules on the plan.

What consent and assent look like inside a clinical setting#

Consent is the adult signing off. Assent is the child saying yes in a way they can. A solid IRB or RRC will want both, even when the work began as plain clinical practice. The honest truth from the talk:

you're following good standard practice and you probably have some stuff in place already that make it pretty agreeable to a research publication From the talk — Dr. Stephanie Peterson

Your normal intake packet probably has a research-use clause already. Pull that clause forward when you set up the study. If it does not, add a short addendum: name the study, name the data being used, name where it might be published, give the parent a clean way to say no. For assent, a smile, a thumbs up, a nod, or a continued willingness to work counts. Document the assent check at the start of each session. Two lines is enough.

If the project started as practice and turned into research later, that is fine. Many published case studies began that way. The RRC will ask you to go back and get a research-purpose consent before any identifiable data leaves the clinic. That is the standard fix.

The smallest paper trail a journal will accept#

A journal editor wants three things on the ethics page. One: the name of the body that reviewed the study. That can read "the [Clinic Name] Research Review Committee" or "the [University Name] Institutional Review Board." Two: a sentence stating that consent (and assent, where relevant) was obtained. Three: a note about who paid for the work and any conflicts.

That is the whole paper trail at the publication stage. The work behind it is the charter, the meeting minutes, the consent forms, and the data plan. Keep those in one folder per study. If a reviewer asks for the RRC charter or the consent form, you send it back within a day. That speed signals a serious program.

One small note on journals. Behavior Analysis in Practice and Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis both accept work cleared by an RRC. Their guidelines say so in writing. Read the ethics statement template in the author guide before you start. Match your paper trail to that template, and you will skip most of the back-and-forth at peer review.

Frequently asked questions#

Do I need IRB approval to publish a single case study?

Yes, in almost every case. Even a clean single-case design needs a body to sign off that the participant was protected and that consent for publication was on file. The path can be light. An RRC review of a one-page plan, a signed research-purpose consent, and a note in the methods section is usually enough for Behavior Analysis in Practice. The journal will reject the paper without that paragraph, even if the data is great. Build the RRC first, then write the study.

What's the difference between an IRB and a research review committee?

An IRB exists because federal funding rules require one at any place that takes federal research money. The rules around membership, review cadence, and reporting are written into federal regulation. An RRC is the same idea built voluntarily inside a clinic that does not take that money. The charter copies the IRB structure. The membership rules copy the IRB structure. The review steps copy the IRB structure. Journals treat the sign-off as equal because the protections are equal. The only place the two split is federal reporting, and your clinic does not have federal reporting to do.

Can I use a private IRB if my clinic doesn't have one?

You can. Companies like WCG IRB and Advarra sell IRB review by the study. The cost runs from a few thousand dollars per study at the low end up to ten thousand or more for a complex plan. For a single case study or a small group design, the price is hard to justify. For a multi-site trial with a sponsor, it is the normal path. Most BCBAs in private practice pick the RRC route first because the all-in cost is closer to a quarter of staff time than a tuition bill.

Watch the full talk#

If you want the full ninety minutes from Dr. Peterson on how clinical questions turn into publishable studies, the CEU is free. It covers the RRC build, the academic partner pitch, and the journal targets that fit applied work. It counts for two general learning credits.

Watch the full CEU on research and practice