Ethical Guidelines For Research Involving Human
Participants
The
Ethics Coordinator for the Linguistics Dept. is currently
Prof. Peter L.
Patrick.
This page provides information about current procedures regarding ethical
approval for research involving human participants. Where the information
provided here is in conflict with the University's ethical guidelines, the
University guidelines take precedence. (Where the information provided
here is in conflict with Dept. handbooks for students, however, this page takes
precedence since it provides fuller information and is updated during the year.)
Who Should Apply for Ethical Approval?
All students planning to undertake a research project involving human
participants (e.g. a project involving tests, questionnaires, interviews,
reaction time experiments, etc.) must obtain ethical approval before
starting data collection. This includes undergraduates performing
research for coursework, MA and MPhil students, and PhD candidates. (All staff
planning a research project with human participants undergo the same process,
using the same form. The information here is however aimed at students.)
How to Apply for Ethical Approval
In order to apply for ethical approval, you should do the following:
- Develop your data collection design well in advance of
beginning data collection.
- Consider the ethics of it carefully; consult relevant
readings from your courses.
- Consult with course instructor/supervisor about your plans
for ethical research. Your instructor/supervisor is the primary
point of contact for information and advice on the ethical
approval process.
- Research involving collecting data in the UK from children
below age 18, or from adults who may be considered vulnerable,
may require CRB (Criminal Records Bureau) clearance, even with
your friends or members of your own family. CRB clearance is
done centrally by the University and adds extra time, measured
in weeks, to your clearance process. CRB checks cost money which
the student must pay (e.g. £60 in the recent past – current cost
may differ). The Dept. Ethics Officer may recommend that you
seek CRB approval, but it is a separate process. If you are
recommended to get CRB clearance, it must be obtained from
Registry after speaking with the Departmental Administrator.
- Download and complete an
Application for Ethical Approval Form. Here is a
Model Form with some suggestions and advice for answering
the questions.
- Prepare a Consent Form, and a Participant Information Sheet
(PIS), appropriate to your project. (It can be acceptable to
combine these into one.) Examples that can be modified are
available from the links below.
DO NOT simply copy an existing consent form –
you MUST ensure that the form you develop
complies with the principles on the
REO Participant Information & Consent webpage. You may adapt
model forms, but a copied form is
likely to prove inadequate or inappropriate and cause your
application to be rejected.
- Discuss the completed application form, the consent form,
and the participant information sheet with your supervisor
(instructor, for undergraduate research). Their approval and
signature is required before your application can be acted on.
- Send your application form, PIS and consent form, signed by
your supervisor, to the appropriate administrator (Grad Admin
for PG research, UG Admin for UG research), in BOTH email AND
signed hard-copy forms. Leave adequate time (e.g. 2 weeks) for
the form to be processed, including possibly being returned to
you for improvements and resubmission.
- The Dept. Ethics Coordinator will pass their decision to the
appropriate Administrator.
- You will receive notification of the decision by email from
the appropriate Administrator. You may also receive information
on revisions required before your application can be approved.
- When it is signed off by the Dept. Ethics Coordinator and
returned to you, THEN you may begin research.
WARNING: DO NOT collect data BEFORE
the date that your application is approved! There can be no
retroactive approval of research involving human participants.
Notes on the Approval Process
- On the application form, "Principal Investigator" refers to
you, the student conducting the research for your module, MA or
PhD.
- Try to avoid duplicating titles on successive applications,
e.g. don't use the same title for your MA and then (a year or
two later) your PhD project; or for a course assignment, and
then your MA project. The REO gets agitated when they see
recurring titles.
- The REO says, "Informed consent must be given on a consent
form. Consent forms must be signed by participants before the
start of any project." This is NOT OPTIONAL. It applies to your
friends, partners and family members, just as much as to
strangers. Failure to provide an appropriate consent form is a
common reason for rejection of applications.
o Linguists often record speech data; where appropriate,
you may secure recordings of oral consent, but this does not
replace the requirement for written consent.
- It is rarely appropriate to have one person
(e.g. a school head) sign on behalf of others
(e.g. parents of schoolchildren), unless they
are directly responsible for someone who cannot
sign for themselves (e.g. the parents - not the
head!). you must leave adequate time, and show
make every effort, to gain consent from the
appropriate persons, and not just the most
convenient. However there will be contexts (e.g.
some schools abroad) where responsibility is
recognised to lie with a single responsible
person.
- The REO says, "It is also good practice to provide
participants with a separate Participant Information Sheet in
advance." This is now also a required element. You can
also combine a PIS with a consent form in many cases.
- Some elements listed in the REO guidance for a Participant
Information Sheet and Consent Form say you "must" do certain
things, while others merely advise that you "should". Your
supervisor will advise about whether your form meets the
requirements and follows good practice.
- In recent years, a sample consent form was available from REO
and from the Dept. website (some supervisors may still have
copies). This form has been removed from circulation by REO
because it does not meet minimum standards for consent forms,
according to the principles on their
webpage. DO NOT use it, as your application
will be rejected. You must develop your own form, ensuring that it follows the principles of
good scientific practice and the University's requirements.
It is possible to base your own form on existing models,
including those below, but the responsibility lies with you to
consider in detail whether they meet the specific needs of your
research, and make adaptations. Your
supervisor will advise about whether your form meets the
requirements and follows good practice.
o Sample forms:
-
This model combines both PIS and Consent
Form in a single page.
-
This model combines both, but on separate
pages. It is good practice to leave participants
with a sheet that explains the project and gives
contact information for the researcher. This
example also covers video-recording.
-
This model is a simple, plain-English
consent form, with comments about how to use it.
- The REO materials do not adequately distinguish "anonymity"
from "confidentiality", but you should understand the
difference. "Anonymity" is when you the researcher do
not know the name or identifying details of the subject; this is
rare in linguistic research, and it is not a general requirement
that you guarantee subjects' anonymity. "Confidentiality" is
when you know identfiying details, but strive to restrict access to them
within reasonable limits. This is the general case for
linguistic research. You must do your best to protect
confidentiality, and
explain carefully on your application how you will do so.
CRB Checks
Research involving collecting data inside the UK from
children below age 18, or from adults who may be considered vulnerable, may
require CRB (Criminal Records Bureau) clearance, even with your friends or
members of your own family. If working within a school, the school authorities
should indicate whether they require CRB clearance. You should clearly indicate
on your Ethical Approval form what the age and vulnerability status of your
informants is, or else the application may be returned to you for clarification.
Obtaining CRB clearance is a separate process from applying
for ethical approval. The current stage is only one opportunity to flag up the
possible need for CRB clearance (or its equivalent). CRB clearance is done
centrally by the University and adds extra time, measured in weeks, to your
clearance process. CRB checks cost money which the student must pay (e.g. £60 in
the recent past – current cost may differ). The Dept. Ethics Officer may
recommend that you seek CRB approval, but it is a separate process. If you are
recommended to get CRB clearance, it must be obtained from Registry after
speaking with the Departmental Administrator.
It is now the University’s advice that if you will be working with children
outside the UK, you do not need a CRB clearance. CRB clearance
only applies in the UK. However, CRB clearance is one way for a UK-based
researcher to show to others abroad that they have been found clear of any
criminal activity in the UK, and may be fit to work with children in general.
Thus it could be useful to have even if it is not required.
If you will be conducting your research outside the UK with children or
vulnerable persons, you are strongly advised to find out what the equivalent
permissions and checks to CRB, and the local norms and expectations, are for
your research site in the country where you will conduct research. There may be
requirements of law or procedure there which do apply to you, or community
expectations that differ from what you might anticipate. It is your
responsibility as researcher to find out about this at an early stage of
research planning, and discuss it with your supervisor. As far as the Ethical
Approval process is concerned, you need only indicate on the form that you will
do so.
If you will be working with children younger than 18 or vulnerable adults,
whether in or out of the UK, it is recommended that you discuss with your
supervisor appropriate practical measures to safeguard both you and the
children, e.g. ensuring that you are not left alone with them.
- Please read the University
policy on student CRB clearance from July 2010.
- You may also consult the Criminal Records Bureau
Code of Practice from April 2009.
- Changes related to the policy and processes associated with
Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) checks occurred in April 2011 -
please see this
memo.
The Academic Section has the following advice about performing CRBs:
- “It is quite difficult to provide you with an exact
turnaround time of Enhanced CRB’s, as it is dependent on the
police national computer check, how many addresses the student
has had, and areas they have lived in. Please note that we will
only carry out a CRB check when notified by the Department,
however once we have received notification, we shall process
them our end as quickly as possible… The CRB estimate turnaround
time of 5 weeks, however many checks have been returned within
two months providing the CRB require no further information.”
The Academic Section refers to the following definitions of a ‘vulnerable
adult’ and ‘child’ from the CRB website,
www.direct.gov.uk/crb:
' The Criminal Justice Court Service Act (CJCSA) defines a CHILD as
someone who is under 18 (under 16 if the child is employed).’
‘A VULNERABLE ADULT is a person who is aged 18 years or older and:
- is living in residential accommodation, such as a care
home or a residential special school;
- is living in sheltered housing;
- is receiving domiciliary care in his or her own home;
- is receiving any form of health care;
- is detained in a prison, remand centre, young offender
institution, secure training centre or attendance centre or
under the powers of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999;
- is in contact with probation services;
- is receiving a welfare service of a description to be
prescribed in regulations;
- is receiving a service or participating in an activity
which is specifically targeted at people with age-related needs,
disabilities or prescribed physical or mental health conditions
or expectant or nursing mothers living in residential care
(age-related needs includes needs associated with frailty,
illness, disability or mental capacity);
- is receiving direct payments from a local authority/HSS
body in lieu of social care services;
- requires assistance in the conduct of his or her own
affairs.’
“If working with children or vulnerable adults, an enhanced check will always
be required and that will be when the work involves ‘regularly caring for,
supervising, training or being in sole charge of such people’."
Links to University of Essex and External Webpages on
Research Ethics
For more information on good scientific practice in conducting research, and
on obtaining participant information and consent, you may consult the following
University web pages. While many of them are aimed at staff research projects
and processes, the main ones relevant to research by students are highlighted
below.
-
REO - Safeguarding Good Scientific Practice Page. Please
read the section on "Principles of Good Scientific Practice" –
it applies to you. When you hand in your approval form, you must
tick a box stating that you abide by it.
-
REO - Guidelines for Ethical Approval of Research Involving
Human Participants. This page applies to you – please read
it. When you hand in your approval form, you must tick a box
stating that you abide by it. While this page has links to the
ethics codes of professional bodies, none of them are related to
linguistics. See "Notes" below.
-
Data Protection and Research Activity. You are required to
know about the 1998 Data Protection Act (it applies whether you
gather data in the UK or elsewhere). This link will inform you –
please read it. When you hand in your approval form, you must
tick a box stating that you have read it.
-
REO - Participant Information & Consent Page. This page
applies to you – please read it. The REO formerly provided a
sample Consent Form (download here), but you do not have to use
it; see "Notes" below. You may substitute your own form,
provided it follows the principles of good scientific practice
and the University's requirements.
-
REO – Ethics in Research. This page contains further
detailed information about the ethical approval process at the
University of Essex.
-
Ethics of Sociolinguistic Research, a webpage developed by
Prof. Peter Patrick, links to online codes of ethics and
practice from linguistic organizations and related disciplines,
provides some background for clinical ethics sources and links
for them, and offers a sample consent foprm, principles to guide
you in developing your own, and a model form for sharing
research data.
-
Revised Research Ethics Clearance Procedures - copy of a
memo dated 22 Sept 2011 sent to all current instructors in DLL
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Last modified on 06 October 2011.