The Aspen IRB process in order — from a defended proposal to a written determination

The Aspen IRB is not the first gate your project passes. It is the gate after the one you have already cleared, and Aspen’s own IRB Handbook says so plainly: the board comes into play after the successful defence of the doctoral project or dissertation proposal, once that proposal has all its required approvals. Everything before that is somebody else’s review. Everything after it is an inspection — and every finding the board will write is already sitting in the file, findable, on the day you decide to file.

Miriam Kessler, DNP, APRN · 2026-08-23

In short. Defend the proposal and collect its approvals. Finish CITI. Assemble the package. Have your chair read and sign the application. File it. The board sets the level and answers with one of four written dispositions. Nothing may be recruited, accessed or collected before that letter.

Where does the IRB actually sit in the Aspen sequence?

Late, and deliberately so. Aspen’s DNP Handbook puts the proposal in front of the DNP Project Team first: developed under the Faculty Mentor Chair, presented in an oral hearing, approved on a written form. Only then does the IRB file open. The board never reads a raw idea — it reads work other people have already blessed, which is why it reads for something they did not.

That difference is the whole of it. Your team asked whether the project was worth doing. The board asks whether the people inside it are protected, and whether the documents describing them agree. A proposal can sail through its defence and still collect findings, because nobody upstream read the consent against the recruitment flyer.

In doctoral programmes the requirement is unconditional: Aspen’s policy holds that projects, dissertations and faculty or staff research all need approval before commencing, at one standard whatever the funding. The board is registered with the federal Office for Human Research Protections and seats at least five members.

Master’s work sits differently, and honestly so. The current MSN Handbook describes the capstone as a written account of the practicum project in five chapters, and carries no IRB chapter at all. That silence is not permission. If an MSN capstone begins behaving like human-subjects work — surveying colleagues, interviewing patients, pulling identifiable records — whether a file is required is a question for the capstone instructor and for Aspen’s current handbook or IRB portal, never for an assumption running either way.

What has to be true before the application is filed?

Five things, and the order between them is not negotiable.

The proposal is defended and approved. The checklist then wants that approved proposal — chapters one through three — as a Word file inside the package, so the board can read your answers against the plan they came from.
CITI is finished, not started. Training must be complete before submission, each module quiz passed at eighty per cent, certificates saved for upload.
Site permission is requested first. It is the one document written on somebody else’s clock, and nothing you do can start that clock retroactively. Aspen warns it is a separate instrument from any immersion site agreement signed earlier.
Any outside board has answered. Where a site keeps its own review body, Aspen says you will typically seek that approval first, and its letter travels inside your package.
Your chair has read and signed the form. The signature and its date belong on the application itself, and Aspen notes you will need a configured digital identity to apply one.

Every item there is verifiable in advance. That is the argument this practice rests on: the inspection you run first costs nothing; the one you leave to the board costs a review cycle.

Who decides the level of review?

Not you, and not your committee. Aspen’s handbook is unusually blunt about it: neither the candidate nor the chair nor committee members hold the authority to set the review level, and the determination rests with the IRB Chair or a designee. The application exists to gather the facts the board needs in order to make that call.

What follows from that is a change in how you should write. You are not arguing for a category; you are supplying the facts that earn one. A file that pleads for exempt status reads worse than a file that describes what it does accurately and lets the board reach the obvious conclusion. Aspen reports that most applications from its community are reviewed as exempt, some as expedited, and very few require the full board. Which of those you get, and what pushes a file up the ladder, is set out in the piece on Aspen’s review levels.

What are the four things the board can write?

Every application is processed and answered in writing. There are four possible dispositions, and only one of them is a refusal.

The four dispositions, and what each leaves on your desk
The board writes	What it means	What the file needs next
Approved	The project may commence, under the versions the board has just approved.	Nothing — except that you now use those exact versions and no others.
Modifications Required to Secure Approval	Changes are needed before the criteria for approval are met. This is a letter of findings, not a rejection.	A written answer to each item, plus the revised page it points at.
Deferred	Reserved for an incomplete application, or for a full board reading that failed to reach quorum. It is not a verdict on the design.	The missing document, or a place on the next convened agenda.
Disapproved	The board has everything it needs and the project does not meet the criteria.	Aspen’s handbook gives reasons with the decision and an opportunity to respond, in writing or by voice.

Notice what is missing from that table: any promise about when. No page here will tell you how long a reading takes, because the board’s calendar is the board’s. What belongs to the file is whether it arrives complete — the only part of the clock anyone can govern.

What must the board be able to conclude before it approves?

Aspen publishes the determinations its board has to reach, and they track the federal criteria for approval. Risks minimised. Risks reasonable against the benefit and against what the work adds to knowledge. Participants selected equitably. Consent or assent sought and documented where it applies. Privacy protected, data kept confidential. Extra safeguards where someone could be leaned on. Site permission properly secured.

Read that list as an inspector would and it stops being abstract: each line names a document, and each document has to say the thing its line requires. “Kept secure” lets the board conclude nothing about confidentiality. A letter without an authorised signature lets it conclude nothing about permission. The board is not being difficult; it simply cannot write down a conclusion the file gave it no evidence for.

Does the file close when the approval letter arrives?

No, and this is where most people are surprised. Aspen names four post-approval instruments, and each has a trigger.

A change request covers any alteration to any aspect of approved work — an instrument, the consent, the setting, how people are recruited — and approval must come before you act on it. A continuing review is owed if the work runs past its one-year approval window. An events report is filed within forty-eight hours where a problem is unexpected, tied to participation, and leaves someone at greater risk; protocol deviations and breaches of the approval terms travel the same route. A close-out retires the file once the university accepts the finished project after the final defence.

Carrying those four instruments is what “end to end” means here. So is the reply loop: when a board writes back asking for modifications, each item needs an answer in its own terms and the corrected page behind it, stamped consistently with everything else in the package. How it works sets out which parts of that road we carry.

Where does the order actually break down?

In five places, all of them upstream of the board and all of them visible before filing.

Filing before the proposal is fully approved. The package wants the approved proposal inside it; without that, the board has nothing to read your answers against.
Leaving the site letter last. Every other finding is curable on your own schedule. This one is not.
Touching anything early. Aspen states that no recruitment, data access, data collection or implementation may occur before approval, and warns that failing to secure it can carry serious consequences. Recruiting and screening count.
An incomplete or untidy package. Aspen says outright that applications that are incomplete, contain errors, or carry inconsistent information will be delayed — and that it may ask you to revise anything a participant will see.
A category the design does not support. The commonest of all, and the subject of the piece on quality improvement and research.

None of those is a judgement about your project. They are defects in a file, and a file is an object that can be inspected before anyone else reads it. Our FAQ takes fifteen recurring Aspen questions one at a time.

What to do next

Send whatever exists to the contact desk and ask for the free application review. Three consultants read the package the way Aspen’s board will, and the findings come back in writing — each with the evidence a reviewer would see, a severity mark, and the corrective action. It costs nothing, no obligation follows, and a ready package is told so. After that, as much of the process as you want is ours: the category settled, every document built, the submission prepared and filed with you, and each reply carried until the board has answered. Your project remains yours; the determination remains the board’s.