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From: Steve Hood
Date: 10/2/01
Time: 9:14:32 PM
Remote Name: 64.12.101.156
Hi, Scott, and all you other distinguished committee members.... I salute you !!
The NSA-RC has the potential to contribute significantly to our understanding of fluency, fluency disorders and stuttering. The NSA-RC also stands the possibility of being "caught between a rock and a hard place" because the goals, roles and responsibilities of the NSA can at times be different from those of the persons who are conducting research. Please let me say that I think that the NSA Position Statement on Research is a powerful, positive and highly appropriate statement of philosophy designed to protect the status of NSA support groups and members, while at the same time sending a statement that it supports research in areas involving fluency and stuttering. The NSA has access to potentially thousands of persons who stutter and their families, and this access leads to an incredible number of persons who might serve as research subjects. But this access must be balanced. Requiring approval of the NSA-RC, with such safeguards as IRB approval, appears to me to be a win-win situation for the three components of ths equation: the researchers, the NSA and it's local Chapters, and the individual members of the NSA. These "checks and balances" are important, and I think it is wise that they are all recognized.
Let me close by saying that I receive requests every year for participation in research that involves our students, our clinic clients, and our local NSA Chapter members. I find it reassuring to be able to require that these researchers be able to show prior approval from the NSA-RC. Thanks to you, Scott, and your "blue-ribbon committee members," for helping serve as a bridge to to blend the aspirations of researchers, while at the same time protecting the status of persons who stuter, local chapters, and the natioinal office of the National Stuttering Association. I am glad that the work of the NSA-RC is being chared with participants in the ISAD-2001.