Am I over reacting? I am in my second year of a part time Phd in Dance Psychology. My background is not in Psychology at all, I didn't even do a degree in the subject however I did do a number of courses including a degree in Dance. It has been pointed out to me on several occasions that the practice of dance is very different to Psychology to the extent that there are several policies and ways of writing (such as Ethics approval) that simply doesn't exist in dance. The same is true in dance, I work professionally in the area and find I am constantly telling my supervisors how to go about working with dancers, venues, dance organisations ect.

Two months ago I started to organise my first study. I knew I needed to get ethics approval for the study but didn't realise that I needed it for the creation of materials (as pointed out above this is not usual in dance). Four weeks ago I sent an email to my second supervisor asking if I needed to get ethics approval as I hadn't been able to talk to my first supervisor about it since my last meeting (two months ago) and just wanted to make sure everything was OK (I only thought of ethics because another phd student mentioned it). He came back with an answer last week saying yes you need ethics approval for creating the materials but not to panic. My first supervisor then jumped in saying that it was now too late to get ethics approval and that we should abandon the study. This means that we wont be able to do the study at all as we will lose funding and we then wont be able to afford it. I suggested that we should push for ethics approval anyway and meet tomorrow (the only day before we are due to make the materials where I am free) to practice the study and discuss what will happen if we can't go ahead. He agreed.

He has now canceled the practice and the meeting on me less than 24hrs before we are due to meet. I feel like he doesn't care about my study and is firmly convinced that it wont go ahead. He seems pre-occupied with other things and shows little interest in what I am doing now. If it wasn't for the other student mentioning ethics to me I wouldn't have even known that we needed ethics approval. Both supervisors seem to forget that I don't have the experience that other phd students have when organising research studies. I have asked to speak to my second supervisor but he is just as hard to get hold of. I'm feeling really miserable and don't know what to do.

Is this normal? Is it usually this hard to organise time with supervisors? I know I need to take ownership of my research but when I don't know the procedures it is really hard to do.

Any ideas?

Welcome to PhD life.

Situations like this are very common. You say you feel as if your supervisors don't care about your study - to be honest, they probably don't. They have many other priorities.

My advice to you is to not take it so personally and just to continue pushing on to get what you want. You should probably also read more about ethics and differences between disciplines - you can't use lack of knowledge of procedures as an excuse for anything. It's your responsibility as an independent researcher to find out about these things.

Can I ask what is involved in the creation of your materials? i.e. do you need participants to be involved at this stage? I'm a Psychology PhD student, and although anything requiring human participants needs ethics approval, I've never needed to get this at the stage of creating materials. I think this kind of problem is quite common, though, when combining two different disciplines - I've spoken to other students who've arrived at Psychology from some other field and haven't realised how big an emphasis there is on things like ethics.

Creating materials requires me to use dancers to create a number of movements on film. The dancers do have to be in particular states of emotions which is why I need ethics approval.

I must point out to TreeofLife. I know it is my responsibility to find out these things, which is why I did and I'm not sure what I am excusing? I'm pointing out that even though I did find out it has taken so long to get an answer that when I got the answer it was too late to do anything about it. I have been reading up on Psychology and procedures (I did a whole different course alongside my first year on stats, lab research ect) and I go to additional classes for the MSc Psychology course so please don't lecture me on the fact I need to 'read more' on this different discipline. However I still believe that when it comes to something like ethics which I have learnt is such a big deal in Psychology someone at some point should have at least mentioned it. Especially if we only get one shot at the study.

The fact that I now can't even talk about it to either of my supervisors is the thing that's bothering me. However it is good to know that this is a common occurrence and I can imagine even more so with part time students who have other commitments outside their research like me. We are all busy people and that might be one of the problems.

I would recommend getting hold of the paperwork for ethical approval from your doctoral office. Then go onto the ESRC website and have a look at their ethical framework. This will give you a good idea of the particular issues that your study will involve. I would then go through the paperwork yourself, and bullet point all the answers yourself. Reschedule the meeting with you supervisory team, telling them you've made a start at the ethics paperwork but need their feedback. Also find out from your department, preferably doctoral office, how long ethical approval usually takes and when does the committee meet next.

If you do this you will show your supervisors that you are taking ownership of the project and more importantly you'll feel a little bit more in control of the process. I've been there, honestly and if you take control you'll get there. The sad reality of PhD work is the sooner you stop waiting for supervisory guidance in order to progress the sooner you really start to progress!

I hope this helps.

I understand you think treeoflife is being harsh but what I think s/he is trying to point out is that when you chance disciplines, some things are so self-evident to those who work in it, that it wouldn't have dwned on them that you didn't know. I'm a social scientist and I have to say it wouldn't have dawned on me to tell someone that you need ethical approval to essentially experiment on human beings, and as this is such a big thing in pyschology, I think your supervisors would have assumed you either knew or that your research training classes covered it (they certainly do at most universities).
As to your supervisors not caring, well you do realise that if they'd let you go ahead, you almost certainly wouldn't have been able to use that material in either your PhD or any publications. Given all the scandals around social pyschology at the moment, I can't imagine any ethics board would be particularly happy to give retrospective ethics approval. Wouldn't that have been worse than your current situation?

I agree with pp's and Tree. Your supervisors won't know every permutation of ethical issues as each PhD is different and yes they will hold things up, s is the way of phD. I am using a method uncommon in my area and my supervisors haven't used it and told me (rightly) to go and find out about it myself. Now another note of caution, just because you can find ethical arguments for using a particular technique or method also doesn't count for anything if it doesn't meet your own University Ethics board advice for the discipline you are submitting your PhD. For example, I am borrowing a method from a different discipline and whilst there would be very few ethical implications if I was using and submitting ethics in that discipline it would be classed low risk. For the department I'm actually submitting with it's high risk and I have to complete the forms accordingly. The best advice you have been given on here is to get your departmental handbook for completing your ethics forms and follow it to the letter, use the research you have done on using that technique and explicitly state ho it meets the requirements of their ethics forms. And if it doesn't, you will have to think a way around it. Good luck.

Hi

Thanks for all your advice some of you seem to understand the problem although there has been a lot of mis-understanding. I'm not complaining about the fact I need to do an ethics form. I've done one and it was send off and one of my supervisors helped me do it. I'm pointing out that I asked if I needed it four weeks ago and I have only just had an answer back leaving me no time to submit an ethics form and get it approved. I'm upset that this has now screwed up my study before it has even began even though I asked in plenty of time because it has just taken so long to a) get an answer and b) submit the form (I can't actually submit it, it has to be the supervisors that submit on my behalf). The biggest problem is that the study can't run at all if it gets held up as we only have enough funding to organise it once and we have already spent the money organising it for 10 days time. Even if I get ethics approval two months down the line I still wont be able to do it because we will have no funding for it. It will be scrapped, wont happen, change of focus, method ect...hope thats clear. That is the thing thats upsetting me - the fact that I just don't know what to do if I can't do the study and I can't talk to anyone about it to sort it out.

I went on here to vent my frustration more than anything as it seems to be a regular occurrence that I organise things and then get held up on the details because I need to talk to my supervisor/ need them to submit something for me ect. Of course I would rather it was this way than not being able to use the materials because I didn't get ethics approval....that is exactly why I asked but I thought I had given them enough time to respond.

I still don't know what to do and I still can't get hold of either supervisor however the fact that some of you have said that this is quite normal has made me feel a great deal better. I'm just going to have to wait until next month to solve it as like my supervisors I'm a lecturer at University and I too have limited time to sort this out. I'm sure we'll meet up eventually.

Yes I think we understand. I think we were all in agreement that supervisors aren't always the best people to advice on ethics procedures (even though you'd expect they would) they probably didn't know themselves! Did you say you also dance? Think around the problem, how else can you create the material - could you have someone film you or scour the web/YouTube for examples already in the public domain? Ethics is terribly difficult... I'm using performance also and will have a nightmare with ethics :'(