Mandatory Education and Training

All faculty, students, advisors, and staff who have contact with human subjects or human subject data must receive training in the protection of human subjects. IRB applications will be accepted only when all project staff and advisors have completed this education requirement. There are two training options for PIs, depending on the level of IRB review required for your project. If after reading the descriptions below you are unsure of which training to complete please contact our office.   To serve as a research advisor, CITI ( not abbreviated) training must be completed. 

  • Certain very low-risk protocols (innocuous surveys and interviews with adults) may qualify for a waiver of training/education.  See Education Waiver for more information.

Abbreviated Human Subjects Training

The abbreviated human subjects training was developed for researchers who will only be performing research that qualifies as Exempt in the IRB review process. If you have current CITI certification, you do not need to complete the abbreviated human subjects training. Qualifying faculty, students, and staff of the University of Mississippi who potentially will perform human subjects research must complete this questionnaire every 2 years. Please review the training materials before completing the Qualtrics quiz.

CITI (Collaborative IRB Training Initiative)

This online educational program is sponsored by the Collaborative IRB Training Initiative (CITI) and the University of Miami. The CITI program was developed by national IRB experts and covers several aspects of bioethics and human subject research in a module format. Each module has educational material that can be read on screen or printed, and a brief online test. The basic cluster of CITI modules takes about 3-6 hours to complete. You can do each module separately – you do not have to complete the entire program in one sitting. When you have finished the course, you will be instructed on how to print or download a Course Completion Report (certificate of completion).

Instructions for registering can be found at http://www.research.olemiss.edu/irb/CITI.

CITI certification is good for three years. On or before your three-year anniversary date, you must complete a CITI Refresher course. Information about Refresher courses can be found on the CITI website.