IRBs review the proposed experiments or study looking at whether it follows particular guidelines related to the health and welfare of the human subjects as well as the personnel carrying out the resarch. IRBs usually provide researchers with a set of forms and proposal guidelines. They may or may not provide example proposals.
Some forum usually exists for proposal writers to ask questions.
IRB approval provides assurance that studies involving human subjects are carefully thought out in terms of their scientific merit but also in terms of safeguarding the health and welfare of all participants. Behavioral and social research also require IRB approval when the experiment or field study includes human participants. For this category, IRBs will typically analyze proposals which are aimed at bettering current means of prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of diseases or medical conditions. Diagnostic studies might address which method works better to detect an HIV infection. Biomedical studies that do not use human subjects during the experiments are not subjected to IRB approval.