I realized I did not do a proper debriefing on my qualifier project for doctoral candidacy in Experimental Psychology from a little over a year ago. I only say "proper debriefing" because my first Ph.D advisor (before she left the program and dropped advising me) trained me to simply thank the participant and to not talk about the details of the study with others. Furthermore, she wanted me to stick to how she trained me without any deviations, which is why I trusted her and was convinced that I was taught how to do a proper debriefing for my experiment (that's not mentioning I had IRB approval).
It was not until I created my dissertation proposal and the materials to go along with it that my current advisor asked about a proper written debriefing statement to upload and submit to the IRB.
That was when I realized that I may have a possible issue. This is a major issue since my previous advisor's consent forms in her lab were shredded entirely and any digital data I can see (on my end at least) is completely and totally scrubbed after one year. I am able to search my emails via an old research assistant's name (since she sent out those emails and cced me in them) and ones I sent out from years ago to email them and properly debrief them if I want. However, would this be necessary at all?
Most importantly, would this error potentially cause my qualifier project to be totally revoked in this case? I also did a poster on it at a conference last year. Could that also be retracted?
If that is possible, what are my options for resolving this discrepancy?
In case it's important, my qualifier project fell under exempt approval because it was an eye tracking study that tracked eye movements as participants read sentences and completed a word reading measure. So, there was no chance of harm at all unless participants held their eyes open indefinitely. I told them to blink as they normally would.
