What constitutes "human subjects research"?

What will be an ideal response?

It is defined as any research activity involving people.  This would include original research where information is collected from subjects directly by questionnaires or indirectly by a search of existing medical or health records.  For example, if you collect data from a classroom and ask students to report their exercise behavior and then match that data with academic records (grades), this would be an example of a study that must be reviewed by an oversight committee to protect the rights of the human subjects.  Secondary data analysis of census or health data published by federal agencies does not fall under the "human subjects research" umbrella, because individuals cannot be identified.  Examples include studies of public data files such as housing values and crime statistics by zip code.  In these cases, no individual person can be identified  so there would be no need for a human subjects review.