One project, one folder, one story — every document a WGU IRB application has to carry
A WGU IRB submission is not a form that happens to have attachments. It is a folder, read as one object, and WGU's own application says so before the first question: what you describe has to match the proposal your course already approved and the description participants are given. Most returns are not caused by a missing document. They are caused by two documents saying different things.
The signed application, a current training record, the consent documents, the instruments exactly as participants will see them, and the site's signature. Each is checked against the others — and against the proposal your course already approved.
What does WGU ask you to send with the form?
Published WGU capstone guidance is specific. Once the application is completed and signed, it is combined with its supporting documents and submitted inside the relevant performance assessment. The supporting set named there covers a training completion certificate from CITI, a signed site authorisation, informed consent for adult participants, parental or guardian consent and a child assent form wherever minors take part, and the data collection instrument itself.
Which of those apply depends on your branch, and the exact form names and routing are set by WGU's current handbook or IRB portal — material that sits behind university sign-on and that we confirm on every file rather than assume. What has held steady across every published version we have read is the principle: the instrument travels with the application, and the consent documents travel with it too.
| Document | What it has to carry | Where it contradicts the rest | Who can produce it |
|---|---|---|---|
| The application form | Methods, instruments, population, risk, identifiers and consent procedure | Describes a project the approved proposal does not | Anyone drafting for you; you sign it |
| Training certificate | Completion in your name, still current | Completed, then expired before filing | Only you |
| Informed consent | Purpose, voluntariness, what is collected, risks, withdrawal, a named contact | Promises anonymity the instrument cannot deliver | Drafted for you; participants receive it |
| Recruitment wording | The email, flyer or script, in final form | Offers benefits or certainty the consent page withholds | Drafted for you |
| The instrument | Every item, in the order participants meet it | Carries a name or ID field while the file claims anonymity | Drafted for you; aligned to the aim |
| Site authorisation | The project named, the access granted, a signer who can grant it | Signed by a colleague without that authority | Only the facility |
| Assent and guardian consent | Age-appropriate language, both documents where minors take part | Present for one age group, missing for another | Drafted for you |
What does the application form itself ask?
WGU's published Request for Approval to Conduct Research opens with identification and a brief description of the project, then works through a numbered sequence that maps almost exactly onto the federal approval criteria. It asks for the methods and procedures, including an overview of the intervention where the design is action-oriented. It asks what data collection tools will be used — instruments, protocols, and any plan to record audio or video. It asks for the population by age and number, and for your relationship to the participants.
It then asks whether the population includes members of vulnerable or protected groups, with a list long enough to catch designs people assume are unremarkable, and it wants the reasoning and the surrounding circumstances, not a tick. Where children take part, it asks you to place the project in one of three risk tiers. It asks what steps minimise known physical, emotional and psychological risks. It asks how anonymity or confidentiality will be protected and how personal identifiers will be handled — and, if participants will not take part anonymously, why the design requires it. Finally it asks about the consent procedure for every stakeholder, including the administrator or supervisor of the organisation.
One instruction on that last question is worth following exactly as written: describe the procedure you will follow to obtain consent, rather than pasting the content of the consent document. The consent document is its own attachment. Reviewers who find it duplicated inside the form usually find the two copies have drifted apart.
Where does the site's signature actually go?
This is a WGU particularity worth knowing before you draft anything. The published form closes with a reminder that where the project needs access to members of an organisation, agency or district, the signature of the administrator or supervisor should be obtained on the informed consent document before the application is submitted. Published capstone guidance separately lists a signed site authorisation among the supporting documents.
In other words: depending on your programme and the current portal, the site's agreement may live on the consent document, on a separate authorisation form, or both. We confirm which before drafting, because the difference changes who signs what — and because this is the one document nobody in the process can accelerate. It moves at the speed of the facility's own approval loop, which for many organisations means a nursing research council or an education office before any signature is offered. Start it first.
Which pages have to agree, exactly?
Six pairings. A reviewer holding the folder can check every one of them, and in our experience most returned WGU files fail at least one.
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Application ↔ approved proposal
Same problem, same site, same population, same intervention. WGU's form asks for this alignment in its opening note; treat it as a requirement rather than a suggestion.
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Application ↔ consent document
What participants are told about purpose, procedure and data has to be what the form says will happen. This is the other half of the same opening note.
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Identifiers claim ↔ instrument and data plan
If the file says nothing identifiable is recorded, the instrument cannot have a name field and the platform cannot be logging addresses. The identifiers fork covers where this quietly fails.
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Recruitment ↔ consent
The flyer, email and script may promise nothing the consent document does not already offer, and must not imply that taking part is expected.
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Population ↔ vulnerable-population answer
If the setting is long-term care, or the participants report to you, the form's protected-population question is live and needs a real answer with context.
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Site authorisation ↔ what you will actually access
People, charts, rooms, systems: the access named on the signature has to cover the access described in the methods.
What about the training record?
It is the one item nobody can prepare for you. Published WGU capstone guidance has candidates attach a CITI completion certificate, and CITI's human subjects research curriculum is built in learner groups — social-behavioural-educational and biomedical — covering the history and ethical principles, how research with human subjects is defined, the federal regulations, risk assessment, informed consent, and privacy and confidentiality, with supplementary modules for work involving children, prisoners or internet-based collection.
Two practical notes. Check which group your programme expects rather than assuming, and check the date rather than the fact of completion — a certificate that lapsed between coursework and filing is a correctable problem only if it is caught before the folder goes in.
What happens when the folder comes back?
Usually nothing dramatic. A file read under an expedited procedure can be returned for modification or escalated, but it cannot be disapproved by a designated reviewer — under 45 CFR 46.110 that authority belongs to the convened board alone. What arrives is almost always a request, and the right response is specific: answer each note in the order it was raised, revise every page that answer touches, and resubmit the folder as one consistent object rather than a patched one.
Where the changes are substantive — a new question, another unit, a different way of storing responses — note that WGU's Policy Handbook requires changes to an approved plan to be reported and cleared before implementation, except where a change is needed to remove an immediate hazard. The order of the walk covers what happens after the letter arrives.
What to do next
Lay the folder out and read it in the order a reviewer will: proposal, application, consent, recruitment, instrument, data plan, site signature. Read for contradiction rather than for quality. Anywhere two pages describe the same thing differently, fix it before filing — that is cheaper than a revision cycle, every time.
If you would rather hand the whole folder over, that is what we do. The walk sets out which parts we carry and which stay yours, the questions page covers what candidates ask before filing, and a free application review will tell you what your branch's folder is missing.
Sources
- Western Governors University Institutional Review Board — Request for Approval to Conduct Research (published copy of the WGU form, PDF)
- WGU Policy Handbook — Institutional Review Board (IRB), cm.wgu.edu
- CITI Program — the human subjects research curriculum, about.citiprogram.org
- 45 CFR part 46 (the Common Rule), full regulatory text — see 46.110, 46.111, 46.116 and 46.117, govinfo.gov
Send the folder as it stands. We will tell you what disagrees.
A draft application, half a consent page, an instrument, or nothing but an aim statement — whatever exists. One of the three consultants reads it and replies, free and with no obligation.
Request the free application review- which documents your branch actually needs
- where two pages currently contradict each other
- whether you can reasonably file it yourself