If you are conducting any research involving human participants or their data you need to apply for ethics approval. Human participants include:
- living individuals,
- recently deceased individuals,
- data generated from or about individuals.
Please note that getting ethics approval can take time. Therefore, it is important that you plan ahead and seek support from both your supervisor and Department Research Ethics Officer (DREO) when preparing your application. A list of current research ethics officers is available on the faculty REC Moodle page.
FREC meets once a month to review a maximum of 8 applications, and you can expect to receive feedback within 2 weeks of the meeting date. Most applications will have points of amendment and clarification, and in some instances require further approvals (e.g. from external bodies such as National Research Ethics Service or Health Research Authority). So make sure you allow sufficient time for this when setting out your project timeline.
For more information about applying for ethics approval within the faculty please check the FREC Moodle page. And you can self enrol on Moodle.