Training for Human Subjects Research

If a researcher has not previously used the CITI training program, they will need to register on the CITI website and affiliate with Virginia Tech. See the steps below:

1. Navigate to the CITI website at: www.citiprogram.org
2. Select “Register” at the top right side of the screen
3. For “Select Your Organization Affiliation”, search for “Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University”.
4. NOTE: Virginia Tech faculty, staff, or students should select the SSO option. Guests should not select the option that has “SSO” at the end.
5. Create CITI program Username/Password
6. A number of questions regarding courses that may apply to each researcher will be presented.
7. The first question, regarding Conflict of Interest, is required by all who will be completing federally funded research at Virginia Tech. Therefore, if this training is applicable and has not been completed then the researcher will need to select this option and complete this training.
8. Next, in Question 2, there are two courses listed that are bold “Basic Biomedical Research” and “Basic Social and Behavioral Research”. The researcher will need to select one of the bold options in Question 2 to complete, depending on which one applies more to the research they will be conducting/participating in. These are the courses that meet the training requirement for Virginia Tech, therefore one of them will need to be completed. 
9. Questions 3-7 can be answered based on the type of research being done and what is required from the department or study.
10. Complete the Human Subjects Research Basic Course (either biomedical and/or social/behavioral/educational, depending on the focus of the research)
11. Select the option to share completion information, as this allows the CITI program to automatically send the completion information to the Virginia Tech IRB Protocol Management system
12. If the share option described above does not automatically update the researcher’s profile,  send a copy of the CITI completion report as an e-mail attachment to irb@vt.edu

If a researcher has previously used CITI, they will need to affiliate with Virginia Tech and select the appropriate courses. See steps below to affiliate and add course(s):

To add Virginia Tech affiliation:

1. Log-in to the existing CITI account.
2. At the top of the page, under "Welcome, [your name]", there is an option that states "Add Institutional Affiliation".
3. Once "Add Institutional Affiliation" has been selected, begin typing "Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech)"
4. Agree to terms of service.
5. Affirm affiliation.
6. Continue

To add courses (the underlined portion shows which courses meet the requirements):

1. Once logged-in to CITI, there is a tab at the top that says “Courses”. Select Virginia Tech from the drop down menu. Scroll down to the bottom and select “Add a course”.
2. A number of questions regarding courses that may apply to each researcher will be presented.
3. The first question, regarding Conflict of Interest, is required by all who will be completing federally funded research at Virginia Tech. Therefore, if this training is applicable and has not been completed then the researcher will need to select this option and complete this training.
4. Next, in Question 2, there are two courses listed that are bold “Basic Biomedical Research” and “Basic Social and Behavioral Research”. The researcher will need to select one of the bold options in Question 2 to complete, depending on which one applies more to the research they will be conducting/participating in. These are the courses that meet the training requirement for Virginia Tech, therefore one of them will need to be completed. 
5. Questions 3-7 can be answered based on the type of research being done and what is required from the department or study.