How it works: the entire IRB process, off your desk
The IRB step of a WGU capstone is a branch with eight stations on it. You stand at the first one and the last one; we walk everything in between, and you know who is holding the folder at every step.
We handle the whole IRB process for a WGU capstone, end to end. It begins with a free application review, settles which branch the project honestly sits on, and from there we build every document, file the submission through WGU's current portal and answer every reply from the board until approval arrives. The research stays yours; the board's decision stays the board's.
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. That outcome is real and we give it often.
The walk, in order
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The free application review
Send where the tree left you and whatever exists: a determination draft, a half-built consent file, an aim statement, or a blank page and a worry. One of the three consultants reads it and replies by email or by phone, whichever you gave us. The review is free and carries no obligation. If your determination draft is clean, the reply says exactly that: file it yourself.
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The reading: your branch, named in writing
The lead consultant reads the aim statement against the four forks the tree asks about: living people, identifiers, one site or generalizable knowledge, vulnerable populations or more than minimal risk. The result is a written reading of where the project honestly sits: a not-human-subjects determination, an exempt category, expedited territory, or talk-first territory, where a small truthful redesign is worth discussing before anything is drafted.
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The plan
Every branch has a different folder. The plan lists each document that branch needs and the order in which to build it, so nothing is drafted twice and the longest limb is started first. On any branch that touches a facility, that limb is the site permission letter, because it moves at the speed of someone else's inbox.
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The documents
We draft the application pages, the consent file (information sheet, recruitment email, flyer and huddle script), the instruments exactly as participants will see them, the data-security plan, and the site letter for the signer's letterhead. Every page is version-matched to every other page, so the file tells one story from the intent statement to the last appendix.
- the application, in the structure WGU's current portal expects
- the consent file: sheet, recruitment wording, script
- instruments aligned to the stated aim
- the data-security plan, specific to drive, access and destruction trigger
- the site permission letter, drafted for signature
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Your signature, and the site's
A few things can only be done in your name: the human-subjects training record that WGU's current handbook expects, your signatures, and the moment you hand the drafted letter to the person at the facility who can sign it. We carry the request and chase it politely; the only thing left to move is the signature.
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The submission
We file the complete package through WGU's current portal in the route the handbook sets, keep the confirmation, and tell you what was filed and when. On Determination & Plan and The Complete File you file it yourself with the package we built; on Full Handover the filing is ours.
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Every reply, until approval
Most files come back at least once with notes. We answer each note specifically, in the board's own order, revise every page the answer touches, and resubmit. After approval the same desk handles amendments when the project changes and continuing-review notices when the board sends them, until the project closes.
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The letter arrives; collection begins
Nothing counts before the letter, and everything counts after it. You collect, analyse and write up your project; we keep the approved file and its dates so any later change can be amended cleanly.
Where the handover happens
The branch is yours at both ends. You bring the question and the site; you run the project once the letter arrives. Between those two points, everything that the board reads is ours to build and ours to answer. The board's part stays the board's throughout: the reading it issues, the category it confirms, the approval and any conditions it sets.
What stays yours, what stays the board's
Yours: the question, the design, the site relationship, the data once collected, the analysis, the findings and the write-up. We do not conduct the research, author findings, or represent any university.
The board's: the determination, the category it confirms, the approval, any conditions on it, and the timing of all of those. We never promise what the board will decide or how long it will take; we make sure the file gives it no reason to pause.
Ours: everything between, in the package you choose. The three packages differ only in how far along the branch we carry the file: to the plan, to the complete file, or all the way through the submission and every reply.
When you do not need us
A clean determination request for a single-site improvement project with nothing identifiable recorded is a document many candidates can file well on their own. The tree says so on its first leaf, the free review says so when it is true, and we would rather you filed it yourself than paid for a branch you did not need. Where the file gets heavier, where identifiers exist, where a facility must sign, where a board has returned notes, that is where the practice earns its fee.
Start at the first station. We walk the rest.
Tell us where the capstone stands and what exists. If the draft is clean we will say file it yourself; if it is not, you will have a written reading of the branch and a quote for the package that fits it.
Request the free application review- which leaf the project honestly sits on
- what the folder for that leaf needs
- whether you can reasonably file it yourself