The primary purpose of the study was tri-fold. The study was conducted to (1) determine differences between faculty users and faculty non-users awareness, perceptions and attitudes about the role and processes of the IRB on one 1890 land grant campus; (2) determine when controlling for status, rank, years of service, and age and the degree to which these variables contributed to the identification of the faculty profile for faculty users and faculty non-users of the local IRB at one 1890 land grant university; and (3) expand scholarly works and empirical literature related to the local IRB's role in human participant's research and its impact upon the university land grant community. This study was conducted at one 1890 land grant institution located in south central United States during the fall of 2007. The sample group consisted of 50 faculty who were self-identified as faculty users and faculty non-users of the IRB and reported their status, rank, years of service, and age. An electronic survey instrument was used to obtain data for this study. Secondary data was secured and analyses were conducted to assess the levels of awareness, perceptions, and attitudes about the role and processes of the Institutional Review Board (IRB), using the SPSS analysis package. Several procedures were employed to aggregate the data: frequencies and cross tabulations, analysis of variances of covariates (ANCOVA), and multivariate analyses of covariates (MANCOVA) to compare specific group mean scores of faculty users and faculty non-users, tenure and tenure track. The significance level was set using an alpha level of .05. The findings revealed (1) that faculty users and faculty non-users had differences between the levels of awareness and attitude; (2) perception remained high among faculty users and faculty non-users; however, (3) when controlling for years of service and age, there were significant differences between the faculty user and faculty nonuser groups.

The inclusion of students with special needs in regular education classrooms has been required by federal law for more than three decades. However, much of the responsibility for successful accommodation of students with disabilities rests upon the shoulders of teachers. Previous research has indicated that successful inclusion of students with special needs is strongly influenced by the attitude of teachers involved. In this study, all secondary agriculture teachers in Utah were surveyed to determine their attitudes and perceptions related to their willingness and ability to include students with special needs in their classrooms and laboratories. Selected personal and professional characteristics were correlated with these attitudes and perceptions. A large majority of teachers responded that they understand the concept of inclusion, are in favor of including students with disabilities, and have had a positive experience teaching students with special needs. However, fewer respondents indicated that they had the skill level to successfully include students with disabilities. Overall, while teachers indicated willingness to include the students with most of the specific types of disabilities, they were less positive in their perceived abilities to successfully accommodate students with some specific categories of special needs.