| Course | MPH 509 Community-Based Participatory Research |
|---|---|
| Week | 6 |
| Paper type | IRB ethics analysis |
| Length | About 1,110 words, 5 pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Chamberlain University |
| Program | Master of Public Health (MPH) |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for MPH 509 Week 6
Ethics Analysis for Institutional Review: The Cedar Grove Drinking Water Study, From Individual Consent to the Harms a Finding Could Do to a Whole Community
Student Name
Chamberlain University
MPH 509: Community-Based Participatory Research
Instructor Name
Month Day, Year
Ethics Analysis for Institutional Review: The Cedar Grove Drinking Water Study, From Individual Consent to the Harms a Finding Could Do to a Whole Community
The Study in Brief
The Cedar Grove Drinking Water Study is run by residents, the county and a university as equal partners. It will survey every household at the park, sample tap water at 30 homes monthly and collect outage and cost diaries from 40 households. Two residents are employed as community research associates. This analysis covers the standard considerations for institutional review and then the issues that participatory work raises and that standard review is likely to miss.
Standard Considerations, Done Properly
Consent. Adults in each household will be asked to consent in English or Spanish, in writing or orally with a witness for those who prefer not to sign. Consent materials are written in plain words that residents checked and were tested with residents. Participation is voluntary, and refusal will not affect any service from the health department.
Confidentiality. Names and lot numbers are stored separately from survey answers and water results, with a key held by two named university staff on a secure server. No table will show a group smaller than ten households.
Risk of harm. The physical risk of water sampling is negligible. The main individual risks are social and economic: a resident whose views or water results became known to the park's owner could face retaliation, such as a refused lease renewal. Since few residents hold more than a month's lease on their lot, the risk is real. A refused renewal would force a family to move a home that may not survive the move, which is a harm out of all proportion to answering a survey.
Benefits. Households receive their own water results, explained by a community research associate, and a $25 grocery card for completing the survey. The benefit to the community is evidence for negotiations about the water system.
Harm to a Community
A finding can harm a community even when no individual is identified. If the study reports that water at Cedar Grove often fails standards, property values and resale prices of residents' homes could fall, and the park could be labeled as unsafe in ways that follow residents. If it reports that the water is mostly safe, residents' long-standing complaints could be dismissed. Either finding could be used by the owner or by outsiders in ways residents did not intend. Standard review focuses on individuals and rarely addresses these group harms. Flicker et al. (2007) analyzed ethics review forms in the United States and Canada and found that they operated almost entirely within a biomedical framework and seldom asked about community-level risks, partnership or dissemination.
The study addresses this through its partnership agreement: the association reviews all findings before release, can hold findings back for a season and may add its own written response to any report. Findings will be described in terms of the water system, which the owner controls, rather than the community, which does not.
Partners Who Are Also Participants
The two community research associates and the association's board members are residents, which means they are both researchers and participants. This raises three issues. They may know personal details about neighbors from survey interviews, which they must keep confidential within a small community where everyone knows everyone. They may feel pressure to recruit neighbors in ways that compromise voluntary participation. And their own households' data are part of the study. The design responds by training associates in confidentiality, assigning them to interview households on streets other than their own where possible, and having a university staff member conduct the associates' own household interviews.
Consent Against Characterization
Individual consent does not cover how a community is described. A resident may agree to answer questions without agreeing that Cedar Grove be described as a place of unsafe water or poverty. The study therefore seeks a second, collective form of agreement: the association's general membership will review the study's purposes and planned products at an open meeting before data collection, and again before any public report. This does not replace individual consent; it adds a community voice on how the community is portrayed.
Data After the Study Ends
Ownership of the data stays with residents, through their association. At the end of the study, the university will return the data and destroy the identification key unless residents vote to keep it. Any later use of the data, such as for a second study or by legal aid in a dispute, requires the association's written permission, and household-level data will never be released to the health department, the owner or any court without each household's consent, to the extent the law allows. The analysis notes plainly that research data can be subpoenaed, and the partnership will seek legal advice on protections available for research records before collection begins.
Table 1
Ethical Issues and How the Study Addresses Them
| Issue | Standard review addresses it? | How the study addresses it |
|---|---|---|
| Individual consent and confidentiality | Yes | Written or witnessed oral consent; separated identifiers |
| Retaliation against residents | Partly, as social risk | No household data shared; 90-day release delay |
| Harm to the community as a group | Rarely | Association review; findings framed around the water system |
| Residents as researchers and participants | Rarely | Training; interviewing on other streets |
| Collective agreement on portrayal | No | Open member meetings before collection and release |
| Data use after the study | Partly | Association ownership; key destroyed; legal advice |
Note. Note. Assessment of standard review drawn from Flicker et al. (2007).
What Review Would Miss
An institutional review board using standard forms would likely approve the study on its individual protections and miss the community-level issues above. The partnership will therefore submit, with its application, the partnership agreement, a short memo explaining the community review process and a request that the board consult its community member during review. Israel et al. (1998) described shared ownership of research and its products as a principle of community-based work, and Minkler (2005) noted that partnerships must face tensions over power and ownership openly. Making those arrangements part of the ethics application allows the board to review them alongside the individual protections it already knows how to assess.
Ongoing Ethical Review
Ethics does not end at approval. The steering committee will discuss ethical issues as a standing item at each monthly meeting, and community research associates will report any concerns raised by residents.
References
Flicker, S., Travers, R., Guta, A., McDonald, S., & Meagher, A. (2007). Ethical dilemmas in community-based participatory research: Recommendations for institutional review boards. Journal of Urban Health, 84(4), 478-493. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11524-007-9165-7
Israel, B. A., Schulz, A. J., Parker, E. A., & Becker, A. B. (1998). Review of community-based research: Assessing partnership approaches to improve public health. Annual Review of Public Health, 19, 173-202. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.publhealth.19.1.173
Minkler, M. (2005). Community-based research partnerships: Challenges and opportunities. Journal of Urban Health, 82(2 Suppl. 2), ii3-ii12. https://doi.org/10.1093/jurban/jti034
The Chamberlain MPH 509 Week 6 instructions
The sixth week asks for an ethics analysis of your participatory study as it would go to institutional review. Address the standard considerations properly: consent, confidentiality, risks, benefits and voluntariness. Then go beyond them to the issues participatory research raises: harm to a community even when no individual is identified, partners who are also participants, the difference between individual consent and agreement on how a community is portrayed, and what happens to data after the study. Explain how your study addresses each. Identify what a standard review would likely miss and how you will bring it to the board's attention. Support your analysis with literature on participatory research ethics.
How the MPH 509 Week 6 example is put together
The analysis handles consent in two languages, written or witnessed, separated identifiers and a ten-household reporting minimum, and names retaliation by the park's owner as the main individual risk. It then shows how a finding could lower home values or dismiss residents' complaints, citing Flicker and colleagues on review forms that seldom address community harm. Resident associates who interview neighbors are assigned other streets, and a university staff member interviews their households. Open member meetings provide collective agreement on portrayal. Data return to the association with the key destroyed. A table compares standard review with the study's measures, and the application will include the partnership agreement and a memo.
Reading the MPH 509 Week 6 grading rubric
The predictable loss on this analysis is the checklist: consent, confidentiality and risk covered accurately, with nothing participatory research specifically raises. It would pass a general ethics course and miss this one. A second weakness is mentioning community-level harm in one sentence without explaining how the study handles it. Ignoring the dual role of resident researchers, assuming individual consent covers portrayal and leaving data use after the study unaddressed also cost points. Strong analyses do the standard work carefully, then address community harm, dual roles, collective consent and data after the study, compare these with standard review and plan how to put them before the board. Boards notice when a risk is named but no protection follows it.
Common MPH 509 Week 6 mistakes, and how to avoid them
Ethics analyses for participatory studies ask you to think beyond the protections most forms ask about. If you share your study and community, we can help you identify community-level harms, plan for partners who are also participants and design a process for collective agreement on how the community is described. The memo that puts these issues in front of a review board is another piece we can draft with you. Your study and its protections remain your own. If your institution's review board uses a particular application form, include its headings, and the custom sample will show where each participatory issue belongs within that form. Where residents face a specific risk, such as eviction or immigration exposure, we can help you describe the protection in terms a board will recognize.
Get a MPH-509 Week 6 example written to your instructions
Send the Week 6 instructions with the ethics framework your section teaches and your study context, and a custom example is written to that framework and returned inside 24 to 48 hours. The first one is free. Any real submission goes through your own institutional process.
More MPH 509 papers and MPH samples
- MPH 509 Week 1: Participatory Research Post
- MPH 509 Week 2: Community Partner Analysis
- MPH 509 Week 3: Partnership Agreement Draft
- MPH 509 Week 4: CBPR Literature Review
- MPH 509 Week 5: Participatory Research Design
- MPH 509 Week 7: Dissemination Plan
- MPH 509 Week 8: CBPR Project Proposal
- MPH 508 Week 6: Workforce Development Plan
- MPH 507 Week 6: Evaluation Design Paper
- MPH 506 Week 6: Community Environmental Assessment
- MPH 500 Week 6: Stakeholder Analysis
MPH 509 Week 6 questions, answered
How can a study harm a community if nobody is identified?
By characterizing the place. A published finding about substance use, violence or disease prevalence in a named neighborhood reaches insurers, employers, lenders and local media, and the consequences fall on residents who never took part. That is a real risk and standard review, built around individual protections, is not designed to weigh it.
Are community partners research subjects?
Not straightforwardly, and that is the difficulty. Somebody who helped design the study, collects data and also belongs to the population being studied fits neither category cleanly. Institutions handle this inconsistently, so the analysis is expected to identify the problem and propose how the partnership should treat it rather than to resolve it.
What is benefit sharing?
Making sure what the research produces reaches the community that made it possible, rather than only the institution and the literature. That can mean findings returned in usable form, capacity left behind, data the community can continue to use, or authorship. Its absence is what turns partnership into extraction, which is why rubrics look for it directly.
Where can I find a free MPH 509 Week 6 sample paper?
The full MPH 509 Week 6 ethics analysis for a manufactured home community water study, covering community-level harms, is on this page.
What does the MPH 509 Week 6 sample say standard review would miss?
Harm to the community as a group, residents acting as both researchers and participants, collective agreement on portrayal and data use after the study.