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Fieldwork and the IRB: A snapshot

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 February 2026

Claire Bowern
Claire Bowern*
Affiliation:
Yale University
*
Department of Linguistics Yale University PO Box 208366 New Haven, CT 06511, [claire.bowern@yale.edu]
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Abstract

An increasingly common theme in publications on ethical review in the social sciences is the burden that regulation places on researchers. But empirical findings of the extent of the problem are difficult to find, and much of the criticism of ethical review boards rests on anecdotal and individual reports. Within linguistics there has also been a greater focus on ethics, but discussion has focused on field research, and ethical regulation has not been systematically surveyed. In this report I present and discuss the results of an anonymous survey of linguistic fieldworkers and their responses to human subjects review. These results provide a snapshot of fieldwork regulation and its effect on field practices.

Keywords

ethicsfieldworkregulationIRBsconsentdocumentationendangered languages

Information

Type
Short Report
Information
Language , Volume 86 , Issue 4 , December 2010 , pp. 897 - 905
Copyright
Copyright © 2010 Linguistic Society of America

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Footnotes

*

Many thanks to all those who participated in this survey, and to three anonymous referees and the LSA's Committee on Ethics for discussion of the results. Conclusions and recommendations are, however, my own. A link to the original survey is given on my departmental home page, at http://pantheon.yale.edu/~clb3.

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