Purdue Global IRB or Purdue University's? Which board reviews your study, and why it matters
A Purdue Global study is reviewed by the Purdue Global IRB. Not by the board in West Lafayette, which serves a different institution, uses a different submission system, and publishes its own worksheets under numbers close enough to Purdue Global's to be mistaken for them. The two names sit inside one system and share almost nothing that matters to a human-research file. Following the wrong set of instructions does not produce a wrong opinion about ethics; it produces a packet built on forms your board does not use.
Short answer
The Purdue Global IRB reviews Purdue Global studies. Purdue University in West Lafayette runs a separate Human Research Protection Program for its own institution. Different forms, different submission system, different contact address — so guidance found on one site does not carry to the other.
Which board reviews a Purdue Global study?
Purdue Global's own. The university states plainly that human subjects research conducted by its faculty, staff and researchers goes to the Purdue Global Institutional Review Board, that documented approval must be sought and received through that board, and that its board operates under its own Federalwide Assurance with the Office for Human Research Protections. Correspondence goes to the Purdue Global IRB office address, and the guidance, worksheets, protocol forms and application route are all published on Purdue Global's own IRB pages.
There is no shared queue. There is no reciprocal arrangement by default under which a West Lafayette approval covers a Purdue Global project or the reverse. If your program is a Purdue Global program, your board is the Purdue Global board, and the sequence you follow is the one Purdue Global publishes step by step.
Are Purdue Global and Purdue University the same institution?
No. Purdue University Global is the online university built for working adults. It carries its own institutional accreditation from the Higher Learning Commission, and its own materials describe it as a public, nonprofit institution in its own right. Purdue University in West Lafayette is a separate institution with a separate campus, a separate Office of Research, and a separate human research protection program housed there.
They share a name, a family and a great deal of goodwill. What they do not share is a board, a portal, a form set or a training rule — and those four things are the entire mechanical content of an IRB submission. A search for guidance on either name returns both, sorted by whatever the search engine thinks you meant, and neither result announces which institution it belongs to at the top of the page.
What actually differs between the two boards?
Enough that a packet assembled from the wrong instructions is not salvageable by editing. It is the wrong drawing.
| Dimension | Purdue Global IRB | Purdue University, West Lafayette |
|---|---|---|
| Who it serves | Purdue Global research involving human subjects | Purdue University's own human subjects research, through its Office of Research |
| Where guidance lives | Purdue Global's IRB pages — Investigator Guide, IRB Toolkit, contact | Purdue's research site, under compliance and the Human Research Protection Program |
| How you submit | An IRB application form, routed first to your advisor or supervisor for approval | An electronic research administration system, with the principal investigator submitting |
| Determination worksheet | IRB-310, Human Research Determination | HRP-310, its own human research determination worksheet |
| Protocol forms | IRB-503a expedited, IRB-503b determination, IRB-503c exempt, IRB-503e external IRB supplement | Its own protocol templates, numbered and hosted separately |
| Ethics training | Three accepted options, including a CITI basic social and behavioral course and a computer-based alternative | CITI human research training with biomedical and social or behavioral tracks, its own passing standard and its own currency window |
| Where questions go | The Purdue Global IRB office | The Purdue University IRB office in West Lafayette |
Why does West Lafayette guidance fail inside a Purdue Global file?
Because it is close enough to look right. Both institutions publish a human research determination worksheet. Both number it 310. One is IRB-310 and one is HRP-310, and a worksheet downloaded from the wrong site will walk you through criteria that are broadly similar, produce an answer that is broadly reasonable, and arrive at your board on a form it does not recognize as its own. The same near-miss runs through the protocol templates and the consent templates.
This is the failure mode the practice was built around, and it has a shape: one dimension, read two ways, by two documents that both look authoritative. Inside a single file it looks like a sample of twelve in the proposal and fifteen in the consent. Across two institutions it looks like a correctly completed form from the wrong university. The reviewer's job is identical in both cases — notice that two readings exist — and the outcome is identical too.
The practical rule is unglamorous. Before you download anything, check the address bar. If the page does not say Purdue Global, it is not describing your board, however sensible it sounds.
What if the study runs at a hospital, school or employer that has its own board?
Then you may be looking at two reviews, and Purdue Global has published instruments for exactly that situation rather than leaving it to improvisation. Its toolkit includes an engagement determination worksheet — the question of whether an institution is engaged in the research at all — along with parameters for letters of collaboration, an authorization agreement between an institutional review board and an independent ethics committee, an external IRB supplement protocol, and guidance for multi-site work. Those documents exist because the answer to "who reviews this" is sometimes "both, in a defined relationship", and the relationship has to be written down before either board acts.
What does not work is choosing. A workplace board's approval does not stand in for your university's, and your university's does not override a site's own conditions of access. The site permission letter and the board relationship are separate dimensions of the same file, and both have to be drawn. We take the letter itself apart in the application checklist.
What if the study is about Purdue Global, or uses its data?
That is a different door, and Purdue Global marks it. Researchers seeking institutional data from the university submit an external research request intake form, one for each project, and the university states that requested data adhere to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act as well as the policies of the Purdue Global IRB. So a project that recruits within the institution, or asks for records held by it, is answering to a privacy regime as well as to a human-subjects regime, and the answers have to agree with each other in writing.
The same principle applies at a smaller scale to anyone studying their own workplace: access, permission and confidentiality are three separate things, and a file that treats them as one is a file with a dimension missing.
How do you tell, in a few seconds, which page you are reading?
- Read the address, not the logo. Purdue Global's IRB material is published under Purdue Global's own domains; West Lafayette's lives on the university's research site.
- Read the form prefix. IRB-310, IRB-312, IRB-313, IRB-502, IRB-503 are Purdue Global's numbering. A different prefix is a different institution.
- Read the submission route. If the instructions describe a research administration system and a principal investigator submitting directly, you are not reading Purdue Global's route, which sends the application to a supervisor first.
- Read the training rule. Purdue Global names more than one acceptable training option; a page that names exactly one track and one passing score is describing a different board.
- Read the contact address. The address the page tells you to write to is the plainest signal on it.
Where any of these five readings disagree with what your program has told you, the university's current handbook or IRB portal governs, and a short message to the board's own office settles it faster than another hour of searching. The questions page covers the related ones — training, site letters, amendments — in the same answer-first form.
What to do next
If you have been assembling a packet from guidance you can no longer place, send the packet over. The first review through the intake sheet is free and binds you to nothing: every document gets read against Purdue Global's published requirements, and what comes back names which pieces are drawn to the right form set and which are not. A file that needs nothing gets told so. A file you would rather not carry can be handed across entire — category settled, documents drawn, packet filed, reviewers answered for as long as they keep writing. The research remains yours from first page to last. The verdict was never ours to give. How it works lays out what handing it over involves. This is an independent practice, unaffiliated with Purdue University Global, and it does not prepare files for the West Lafayette board.
Sources
- Purdue Global IRB, About and mission: purdueglobalwriting.center/irb/
- Purdue Global IRB, Investigator Guide: purdueglobalwriting.center/irb-investigator-guide/
- Purdue Global IRB, IRB Toolkit (engagement determination, collaboration letters, authorization agreement, external IRB supplement, multi-site appendix): purdueglobalwriting.center/irb-toolkit/
- Purdue Global IRB, Contact: purdueglobalwriting.center/irb-contact/
- Purdue University Global IRB, home and FAQ (Federalwide Assurance, training options): sites.google.com/purdueglobal.edu/purdueuniversityglobalirb/home
- Purdue Global, External Research Request Intake Form: purdueglobal.edu/about/researcher-request-intake-form/
- Purdue Global, Accreditation: purdueglobal.edu/about/accreditation/
- Purdue University, Human Research Protection Program — about: research.purdue.edu — HRPP about
- Purdue University, Human Research Protection Program — getting started: research.purdue.edu — HRPP getting started
- 45 CFR 46.102, definitions of research and human subject: law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/45/46.102