How it works: the entire GCU IRB process, from one desk.
The free application review is the entry. Everything after it — the determination, every document, the submission, every reply to the board — is the service. You run the study. We run the docket.
The short answer
We handle the whole GCU IRB process end to end in three moves. First, we read your AQR-approved proposal the way the board will and settle the level of review and the document plan. Second, we build every document the board reads — the application, consent and assent, recruitment materials, instruments with permissions attached, the data-security plan, site authorization letters drafted for signature — each written against the others and against the approved proposal. Third, we handle the submission in GCU's current IRB portal and every reply to the board until the determination or approval letter is in your hands. The study, the data and the findings stay yours; the board's decision is always its own.
Where the board sits in GCU's order
At Grand Canyon University a doctoral manuscript reaches data collection in a fixed order: the committee and chair shape it inside the DC Network, academic quality review approves the proposal, and only then is the IRB application filed. The board is the last desk — and it reads backward, checking every line of the application against the proposal AQR already approved. That is why most of this work is alignment rather than argument. The method was settled two desks ago; the file's job is to say the same thing everywhere.
The exact sequence, the forms and the portal steps change from time to time. Where this page and GCU's own materials differ, GCU's current doctoral handbook or IRB portal governs — and part of our job is knowing what changed.
The three moves
Every case crosses the desk in the same order. One consultant reads and plans, one builds the documents the board reads as promises, one files and answers the board. You will know which of them is holding your file at every point — meet the three of them.
First move — the determination and the plan
We read your AQR-approved proposal the way the board will, settle the level of review — not human-subjects research, exempt, expedited or full board — and lay out every document, letter and certificate the case will need before a word is drafted.
Second move — every document, built
The application itself, consent and assent documents, recruitment materials, instruments aligned to the approved proposal, the data-security plan, and site authorization letters drafted for the site's signature — each written against the others, so the board finds no daylight anywhere in the file.
Third move — submitted, and every reply answered
We handle the submission in GCU's current IRB portal, then every reply to the board — revision responses, amendments, and continuing review — until the determination or approval letter is in your hands.
What stays yours: the study, the data, the findings. What stays the board's: the decision — a clean file is the only argument it hears.
First move, in detail: the determination and the plan
Nothing is drafted until we have decided what the board is going to ask. The reading starts with your proposal as AQR approved it — population, sample, recruitment, instruments, procedures, consent, data handling — and asks the questions the federal criteria ask: are living people involved, will identifiers exist, is anyone in the population one the regulations protect, is the intent single-site quality improvement or generalizable knowledge, and is there interaction or records only. The answers place the file in a level of review; the level-of-review reading on the homepage runs the same five questions in public.
The reading ends in a finding, in writing. Sometimes the finding is that the file reads as exempt territory and is clean enough to submit yourself — and that is what you will hear, because the free review is a reading, not a pitch. Otherwise the finding becomes the plan: every letter, certificate, consent document and exhibit the case will need, the order to build them in, and anything already drafted that has drifted from the approved text.
Second move, in detail: every document, built
The application is written against the approved proposal line by line, because that is exactly how it will be read. Around it we build the exhibits: consent and assent documents at a reading level your population can actually give consent at, recruitment materials that promise nothing the consent does not, instruments exactly as AQR approved them with the author's permission or license attached, a data-security plan that describes identifiers one way in every place they appear, and site authorization letters drafted for each site's signature and matched word for word to the procedures. CITI certificates are checked against every name on the protocol before anything is filed.
The test we apply to the finished file is simple: any two documents, laid side by side, say the same thing. That is the test the board applies too.
Third move, in detail: submitted, and every reply answered
We handle the submission in GCU's current IRB portal, with your sign-off, and from that moment every reply to the board is ours to draft: modification responses, clarifications, amendments when the approved procedures need to change, and continuing review while the study runs. The one rule that governs every reply is that it introduces no new drift — a response that quietly rewrites approved procedures is how a file earns its second return. Nothing for you to chase, and nothing for you to draft at midnight.
Every document the board reads — and how each one fails
An IRB application is never filed alone. Each attachment is read as evidence, and each has its own way of failing. This is the manifest; the packages on the pricing page show which of them each one includes.
| Document | The board reads it as | How it commonly fails |
|---|---|---|
| The IRB application | A line-by-line restatement of the AQR-approved proposal | Drift — any daylight between application and approved text |
| Consent and assent documents | Promises: what you will collect, keep, and who will ever see it | Promising more, or less, than the procedures deliver; a reading level the population cannot consent at |
| Recruitment materials | The first thing a participant sees | A promise the consent does not make; reaching someone the sample section does not name |
| Instruments and permissions | The instruments exactly as approved, with provenance | Renamed or lightly revised after AQR; no permission or license attached |
| Data-security plan | How identifiers are recorded, stored, coded and destroyed | Described three different ways in three places |
| Site authorization letters | Proof each site permits exactly what the procedures describe | A site named with no letter; a letter that authorizes less than the application; a signature without authority |
| CITI certificates | Current human-subjects credentials for every name on the protocol | A certificate that lapsed between proposal and application; names that do not match the protocol |
Which course track, form or template GCU currently expects for each of these is set by GCU's current doctoral handbook or IRB portal; the manifest above is how the board reads them, not a substitute for it.
The two truths
Two things never move from desk to desk, and both are worth saying plainly, because they are what make the rest of this honest.
The study stays yours
The research question, the design, the data and the findings are yours and your committee's. We do not conduct the research, collect the data, run the analysis or author a word of the findings. What we handle is the docket — the file that earns the study its permission to begin — and every document in it says what your approved proposal already says. If a change to the method is ever needed to satisfy the board, it goes back through your chair and committee as a change to the study, not as a quiet edit to the application.
The decision stays the board's
Nothing we do predicts, promises or influences what the board decides. The board's decisions are its own, on the file it reads. What we can do is make sure that the file it reads is complete, aligned and on time, so that the only argument the board hears is a clean one.
A clean file is the only argument the board hears. Everything else on this desk is in service of that sentence.
The standing rule of the desk
What happens on a return
When the board writes back, it writes about the file. The letter lists what it wants changed, clarified or added — modifications required, a deferral pending more information, or, rarely, a file it will not approve as submitted; the board's own labels are in GCU's current IRB portal. None of those is a verdict on the study. Every one of them is a list of sentences to be answered.
How we answer
- We read the letter against the file and against the approved proposal, point by point, and decide which points are drift, which are missing exhibits, and which are questions the board genuinely needs answered.
- We draft the response so that every point is answered in the board's own order, and every changed sentence in the file is changed the same way everywhere it appears.
- We check the revised file for new drift before it goes back — the commonest way a second return is earned is a first response that quietly rewrote approved procedures.
- We file the response in the portal with your sign-off, and keep answering until the determination or approval letter is in your hands.
After approval: amendments and continuing review
Approval is a letter with conditions. A change to an approved procedure — a site, an instrument, a recruitment window, a consent form — goes to the board as an amendment before it is used. Studies that run long enough reach continuing review. In Full Handover both stay on our desk until the study no longer needs the board.
If you came to us after a return
Many files arrive on this desk already returned once. The first move is the same: the reading and the plan, now with the board's letter as part of the evidence. What it tells us most often is where the drift is — and a file rebuilt against the approved proposal, rather than patched from memory, is how the third submission becomes the last one. The record of files that crossed this desk includes several that began exactly there.
What you do, and what we do
What stays on your desk
- The study — question, design, data, findings — and every method decision, made with your chair and committee.
- Sign-offs: nothing is filed in your name without your yes.
- Your sign-in to GCU's current IRB portal and DC Network where GCU requires the candidate's own access.
- Running the study exactly as approved once the letter arrives.
What moves to ours
- The level-of-review reading and the document plan, in writing.
- Every document and exhibit, built against the approved proposal.
- The submission, and every reply to the board until the letter.
- Amendments and continuing review after approval, in Full Handover.
Start with the free application review — and if the honest finding is "file it yourself", that is what you will hear.