Find your branch before you write a word.

Usually it needs a determination rather than a full review. Most WGU MSN capstones are single-site quality-improvement projects, and the most common honest outcome is a written determination from WGU's IRB office that the project is not human-subjects research. You still file to get that determination; it is not something you declare yourself. Misclassifying in either direction is costly.

Research dressed as quality improvement collects data under a claim the office never reviewed, and the branch you actually walked was never approved. Quality improvement dressed as research volunteers a project into a review it never needed and buys a heavier file for nothing. The exact form and route for the determination request are set by WGU's current handbook or IRB portal; the tree above reads which branch your project honestly sits on.

Four questions decide it: whether the project draws information from or about living people; whether anything you record identifies them; whether the aim is to improve practice at one site or to produce generalizable knowledge; and whether a vulnerable population or more than minimal risk is involved. Topic and method matter far less than those four answers.

The identifiers question splits the tree in half. Everything where nothing recorded points back at a person ends in a determination or an exempt reading; everything identifiable ends at expedited review or a conversation to have before drafting. A linkage key you keep is an identifier, wherever it is stored.

No. Collection begins when the approval or the written determination exists, not before, and there is no retroactive approval. Chart pulls to see what is there, pilot runs of a survey and notes on conversations you plan to quote all count as collection.

A project built on early data can be unusable from the root, however good the work. This is the cheapest mistake on the whole tree to avoid: it costs a date on a calendar and nothing else. On the determination branch the clean sequence is still written determination first, data second.

Plan on it. WGU's current handbook or IRB portal names the human-subjects training it expects and which modules; CITI is the usual vehicle, and the completion record goes into the file. Finish it before filing, because a missing training record is one of the simplest reasons a file stalls.

The training is about the person filing, not the project's risk level, so it applies on the light branches too. Keep the completion record current through the life of the project, and check WGU's current portal for whether anyone else named on the application needs a record as well.

If the project touches a facility's people, records, rooms or data, plan on a letter on the facility's letterhead signed by someone with authority to grant that access. It is routinely the slowest document in the folder because it moves at the speed of someone else's inbox, so request it first.

A usable letter names the project and the specific access granted, and comes from a role that can grant it: a director or administrator, not a friendly colleague. Many facilities route the request through their own research council or education office first; that internal loop is the long pole. On our files we draft the letter for the signer's letterhead and carry the request, so the only thing left to move is the signature.

Exempt means the project fits a named low-risk category, confirmed by the reviewer rather than declared by you. Expedited means identifiable information at minimal risk, read closely by a designated reviewer instead of the convened board. Full board means the convened committee meets on it, usually because of a vulnerable population or more than minimal risk. A fourth outcome sits before all three: a determination that the project is not human-subjects research at all.

Most WGU capstones land at the determination or the exempt reading. On every branch the file decides: instruments that match the stated aim, recruitment wording that promises nothing, and a data plan that keeps the identifiers answer true from first collection to final page.

Often yes, but the relationship changes the file. Your own patients, supervisees or direct reports can feel they cannot decline, so the board reads recruitment wording, voluntariness language and anonymity claims closely. Surveying your own patients can also move the project toward the talk-first branch, so plan that before drafting.

Small, truthful design choices help: an anonymous instrument, distribution by someone outside the reporting line, a clear line that declining changes nothing about care or employment, and no cell small enough that "the one night-shift educator on 4 West" is identifiable.

A return is a set of notes, not a rejection. You answer each note specifically, revise every document the answer touches so the file still tells one story, and resubmit. Most returns trace to a mismatch: recruitment that promises what the consent sheet retracts, an intent statement in research language over a QI design, or a data plan that quietly keeps an identifier.

On our files the reply is ours to write: each note answered in the board's own order, every affected page version-matched, and the resubmission filed through WGU's current portal. Amendments after approval and continuing-review notices are answered the same way, until the project closes.

No. We handle the entire IRB process, which means the determination and plan, every document, the submission and every reply until approval, while the research itself stays yours: your project, your data, your findings. Pricing is quoted in writing after the free application review as a fixed fee, in three packages: Determination & Plan, The Complete File, and Full Handover, the premium package that takes the whole branch off your desk.

The quote fits the branch you are on, not a menu, and there is no hourly billing. If the tree has put you on the determination leaf with a clean draft, the free review will say so, and you file it yourself. The pricing page details each package; the board's decision, on every package, stays the board's own.