Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Hi,

I am doing a project on the effect of artistic expression (such as painting) on levels of pain.
I'm having two groups of people put their hands in ice for a set amount of time.
After that, one group will take a survey about how much pain they felt.
And the other group will paint a picture about their pain and then take that same survey.
I want to see if the group that got to express themselves through art reported to have less pain compared to the other group.

The only problem is that my teacher said that this could be rejected by the IRB because "I'm inflicting pain on people".
But I would like to emphasize that this will be purely consensual and there is no risk that science has proved of putting your hands in ice cold water for 30 seconds.

What do you think? Is this unethical? Will this be approved by the IRB?

Hi Rhada and welcome to Scibuddies,

The responsibility of the Institutional Review Board, the IRB, is to insure that trials involving human volunteers adhere to a strict set of guidelines. Your hypothesis that drawing a picture related to a type of physical discomfort will lessen its effect is very interesting but as you point out, the IRB may reject your ice-water treatment. In order to test your hypothesis, however, you have to cause some discomfort but the form of the discomfort is the problem.

I hope the other experts weigh in on this question because it relates to all projects where people are the subjects and what should be the limits on an experimenter's tests.

As a possible work-around for your project how about showing a series of pictures that would be expected to produce a certain emotion and compare your subjects responses with or without their drawing an interpretation of the emotion. I don't know if that is what you are aiming at but it would get away from the use of physical discomfort.

Good luck!

Sybee

Sorry for misspelling your name, Radha!

@SciB

I also hope that more experts reply on this topic because I am really at a standstill.
If the IRB does reject it, thank you for the possible work around!

PS, I didn't even notice you spelled my name wrong, hahaha.

--Radha Upadhyaya

Hi Radha,

I'm glad you liked my suggestion and that it might help. Talk to your teacher again. Maybe she has a different idea for testing your hypothesis about the benefits of drawing/painting on pain. Scientists who study PTSD may have tried this technique but their subjects already have suffered pain so the IRB would not reject it. Art therapy is one of several new methods to relieve pain, depression, stress, etc., and I think any activity that focuses a person's mind on something other than their troubles can be beneficial. How you can test that, however, is a challenge!

Good luck,

Sybee