The Use of Animals in Psychological Research: A National Study of Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees

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This project is designed to follow up two national surveys in which psychologists and psychology students were asked about their attitudes toward the use of animals in psychological research and teaching. The focus of the present study will be on an important but neglected aspect of the animal research enterprise-the role of institutional animal care and use committees (IACUCs). As mandated by law, these committees are responsible for approving studies and for assuring that laboratory animals are treated humanely. Consequently, they provide an ideal vehicle for understanding the decision processes that underlie scientific and ethical judgments of animal research. In the proposed study, 50 IACUCs will review four randomly assigned animal research proposals that have been recently reviewed at another participating institution. In addition, the approximately 500 individuals serving on these committees will be asked to evaluate various dimensions of each research proposal (e.g., scientific merit, clinical value) and to complete several items from the earlier survey of psychologists. This combination of committee-level data and individual-member data will be used to generate statistical models of IACUC decision making, and they will permit, for the first time, quantitative estimates of the inter-committee reliability of IACUC recommendations. The goal of these analyses will be primarily twofold: to understand the psychological factors associated with IACUC decision making, and to suggest policy-oriented strategies designed to maximize the reliability of protocol reviews.