Goals, Principles, and Standards

The goals of accreditation are to:

• Improve the systems that protect the rights and welfare of individuals who participate in research.
• And communicate to the public the strength of an Organization's commitment to the protection of human research participants.

To help promote these goals, AAHRPP has adopted nine overarching ethical principles for protecting human research participants, which serve as the foundation for the accreditation standards for Human Research Protection Programs.

The Standards themselves describe what Organizations can do to consistently act on these principles by applying them to the diverse institutional and cultural contexts in which research is conducted and reviewed. AAHRPP acted to strengthen Human Research Protection Programs and reduce the burden of the accreditation process on Organizations by simplifying and streamlining its Current Accreditation Standards in 2009.

The Final Revised Accreditation Standards consolidate the number of Domains from five to three and reduce the number of Standards from 22 to 15 and the number of Elements from 77 to 60.

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