Ethics
Ethical approval is required if you are conducting research which requires you to interact with humans and or human tissue. This applies to undergraduate Honours, Masters and PhD students as well as University staff.
Research involving human subjects, such as questionnaire surveys and interviews, must receive formal ethical approval before any data are collected. The inclusion of unapproved data in any assessment is a breach of the Research Misconduct Policy.
Ethical application process
Types of research that require ethical approval include:
- surveys
- questionnaires
- interviews
- psychology studies
- case studies
- invasive testing
Research involving social media also requires ethical approval. Both researchers and participants must be fully aware that social media and social networking can have blurred boundaries regarding privacy. Researchers are responsible for ensuring that participants know that, although every effort will be made to restrict visibility, there is a potential for research done this way to become accessible to a much wider audience: once uploaded, it remains a permanent traceable online record, even if you choose to delete it later. See more information on the University Teaching and Research Ethics Committee (UTREC) webpage on social media research.
You must obtain ethical approval in the form of a favourable opinion letter before proceeding with your research. If you are a student, you will be required to add a copy of your formal approval into your dissertation or thesis before submission. In addition, many journals now require evidence that favourable opinion was granted in association with the work before accepting papers for publication.
UTREC is the overarching committee which delegates responsibility for the ethical review of all teaching and research activities involving human participants to each School.
The UTREC pages are an excellent source of information in relation to conducting your research:
- For help, visit the integrity and ethics page.
- To view the ethical application form and all associated forms, visit the ethics application and guidance page.
- For more on how to apply, see the online training information for researchers applying for ethical approval.
Ethics guidance
An ethics application must be submitted by anyone undertaking research involving human participants. This also includes the use of secondary data, especially if the data is from a study using human participants.
Please read the guidelines on research involving humans thoroughly and ensure you complete all required forms. Incomplete applications will be returned without review, which will delay any start to research.
Using secondary data
Please read the guidance on secondary data and discuss any secondary data submission with your supervisor before submitting an ethics application form, as this may not be required.
Postgraduate taught (PGT) applicants
You are encouraged to submit your ethical application well in advance of the final deadline.
Undergraduate applicants
An ethics application must be completed by every student undertaking MN4301 Management Project, EC4499 Dissertation in Economics and EC4498 Research Project in Economics.
For further guidance, please refer to the University's information on integrity and ethics.