I am finishing my ethical approval form today and will be emailing it to my supervisors this evening so they can check it before I submit it. Of course everyone here is going to have different experiences with ethics due to their research and institution, but I'm just interested to hear how the process worked for everyone else, and hopefully it will be useful to me and others in my position.
At my university we have to submit a form online to the ethics panel, who have a meeting and return with their verdict. There are few guidelines about the form, we are just advised to stick with a template. It asks for an abstract, introduction, methodology and analysis, participant information, the purpose of the research and the expected outcomes of the research. I do not have to go through any external agencies (e.g. NHS) with my project, although I am using human participants. They will all be aged over 18.
I am aware that this is a form and not the methodology chapter for my thesis so I am keeping it rather brief, although my selected methodology is fairly new and contested so it will have to be explained clearly. I think my form will be about 4500 words, does that sound like enough?
Any advice on obtaining ethical approval would be appreciated, I really want to get through this is one piece!
Natassia
Hello Natassia,
I have recently submitted my second ethics application of the PhD. My first was accepted (with only a very minor correction of one typo) in the first instance. From memory, mine were also around 4500-5000 words. The methodologies I use are very new and have only come about in the last three years in only a handful of studies. I think the key to writing this section on the ethics form is to be very clear and concise. I often ask someone in my family or my girlfriend to read over this section and see if they can understand what methodologies I'm planning to use. This is a great test to see if I have been able to write the tasks/measures I'm using in plain English. It will be a very similar situation for your reviewer who may not be familiar with the methodologies you are employing.
Hope this helps in some way?!
PostgraduateForum Is a trading name of FindAUniversity Ltd
FindAUniversity Ltd, 77 Sidney St, Sheffield, S1 4RG, UK. Tel +44 (0) 114 268 4940 Fax: +44 (0) 114 268 5766
An active and supportive community.
Support and advice from your peers.
Your postgraduate questions answered.
Use your experience to help others.
Enter your email address below to get started with your forum account
Enter your username below to login to your account
An email has been sent to your email account along with instructions on how to reset your password. If you do not recieve your email, or have any futher problems accessing your account, then please contact our customer support.
or continue as guest
To ensure all features on our website work properly, your computer, tablet or mobile needs to accept cookies. Our cookies don’t store your personal information, but provide us with anonymous information about use of the website and help us recognise you so we can offer you services more relevant to you. For more information please read our privacy policy
Agree Agree