Ethics Review and Approval Processes
A review panel is not a compliance layer bolted onto research. The source gives two reasons it has to exist and names three parties it protects — and one of those parties is you.
Why a panel has to exist at all
The obvious answer — that someone has to check — is not the answer the source gives. It gives two reasons, and both are about the limits of written standards rather than about policing.
Read the first paragraph again. It opens by conceding that the need to do accurate research genuinely conflicts with participants' rights — not that bad researchers cut corners, but that good research and individual rights pull against each other. A panel is the mechanism for adjudicating a real conflict, not for catching cheats.
The second sentence explains why a written code is not enough on its own. Standards are general; circumstances are specific; and no author of a code has met your project. Whatever a code says, someone still has to look at what you are actually proposing.
The third sentence is the one that should change how you write an application. The procedure exists to assure that researchers consider all relevant ethical issues in formulating research plans. Its object is your thinking at the design stage — which is why an application asks you to describe decisions rather than to promise good conduct.
Three parties the panel protects
The safety and rights of the people in your study
The stated purpose. The panel decides whether additional actions need to be taken to assure them — meaning it can require more of you than you proposed, and frequently does.
The institution hosting or accrediting the work
Protected against the potential legal implications of neglecting participants' ethical issues. An unreviewed study carrying an institution's name is the institution's exposure as much as yours.
You
Named explicitly in the source alongside the organisation. Approval is evidence that a competent body examined your design and accepted it — which is worth having when a finding is disputed later.
That third card is the one most applicants never register, and it changes the emotional register of the exercise. A reviewed and approved design is a defensible design. The same protective logic appears again in the application's ownership section, where the source notes that specifying access and ownership protects you should questions be raised about the validity of your research data — see Research Data Storage, Retention and Ownership.
The rule that governs everything else
Two limbs, and the second is the one that does the damage. The first limb is a permission rule: no approval, no research. Most people accept it and plan around it.
The second limb is a retrospective invalidation rule, and it has no equivalent anywhere else in a research project. Data collected before clearance is not merely irregular or awkward to justify. It cannot be used for your findings. The work is not fixable by later approval, by disclosure, or by a supervisor's sympathy, because approval does not operate backwards.
What this rule makes impossible
- Running a pilot interview "just to test the questions" before the application goes in
- Using data you already collected at work for another purpose, once you decide to study it
- Starting collection while an amendment is with the committee
- Beginning with the participants who are hardest to schedule, ahead of clearance
- Treating approval as a formality that will catch up with a project already under way
What it makes valuable
- A clearance date placed on the plan as a hard predecessor, not a milestone
- Instrument design finished early, because the instrument goes in with the application
- A proposal completed first — it is the raw material of the application
- Time-boxed slack between submission and the first booked interview
- Recruitment sequencing decided before approval, so collection starts the week it arrives
Dual approval when your workplace hosts the study
Most readers of this library will study something their employer is involved in, and the source treats that as a change in the number of approvals required rather than a detail of context.
The definitional treatment of when a workplace counts as a host, and what it means for your schedule, is in What Research Ethics Are and Why They Matter. What belongs here is the process mechanics: the source names three things to establish, and it names them separately for each body.
WHAT TO ESTABLISH FOR EACH APPROVING BODY BEFORE YOU DRAFT ANYTHING
| Question the source tells you to ask | What you are actually finding out | What goes wrong if you assume |
|---|---|---|
| What does the application form require? | The specific fields, evidence and attachments — which differ between bodies and drive what your proposal must already contain | You write to one form and discover the other wants material you never gathered |
| Is the process on-line or through a committee? | Whether submission is a form with routing rules or a paper going to a meeting with a calendar | You plan around a submission date when what matters is the next meeting date |
| What timelines apply? | The stated turnaround of that body, including resubmission cycles after amendments | You add the two processes in parallel when one is a precondition of the other |
| Will one body accept the other's approval? | The source states the University will accept another organisation's ethics approval when attached to your application | You run two full applications in parallel and reconcile two sets of conditions instead of sequencing them |
The first three questions are the source's own. The fourth is the source's statement about acceptance, restated as a planning question.
That last row is the practical lever. Because one approval can be attached to the other application, dual approval is usually a sequence rather than two parallel tracks — and sequencing it the right way round saves a resubmission when the second body attaches conditions the first has not seen.
How the process itself routes your application
Two features of the process are worth knowing before you touch a form, because both operate automatically and neither is about the quality of your research.
The first is routing by role. The source describes an online system in which student applications route automatically to the supervisor for review and authorisation before reaching the committee, and in which the form offers a choice between submitting as a student and submitting as a researcher. Choosing the wrong one bypasses the supervisor entirely — and nothing tells you it has happened.
The second is escalation by answer. A single question, answered a particular way, can route an application automatically to a higher-level committee whose requirements are different from the ones you have addressed. The escalation is silent, immediate, and a function of your answer rather than of your study.
Sequencing approval into the project plan
Because clearance is a hard predecessor to collection and cannot be applied retrospectively, it behaves like a long-lead procurement item rather than a review gate. The order below is fixed by dependency, not by preference.
- Before you draftIdentify every body whose approval is required. Obtain each form itself, not a description of it, and each body's stated timeline and submission mode.
- While designingSettle the decisions the application asks about — participants, recruitment, consent, risks, recording, storage, identifiability, access and ownership. The form is a design review, so the design has to exist first.
- Before submissionComplete the instrument and the participant information sheet. They are attachments, and an application describing an instrument that does not yet exist invites an amendment cycle.
- At submissionCheck the routing: the right role, the right category, the right authorising person. Confirm the application reached your supervisor if it was supposed to.
- While under reviewCollect nothing. Use the period for literature, instrument refinement and scheduling that does not involve contacting participants.
- On approvalRecord the approval reference and any conditions attached, and check that what you are about to do matches what was approved rather than what you last drafted.
- If the design changesEstablish whether the change needs an amendment before you make it. A design that has drifted from the approved one is, in the terms of the rule, unapproved.
Before you submit to any body
- Every approving body identified, with its form, its submission mode and its stated timeline
- The proposal finished — the application draws on it and is far harder to write without it
- Instrument and participant information sheet complete and attached
- Screening questions answered from established fact, not from caution or guesswork
- Submission role and application category checked before you press submit
- Supervisor authorisation confirmed as received, where the process requires it
- No data collected, from anyone, including pilots
- A written note of the conditions attached to any approval already granted by another body
What goes into the application itself, part by part, is in Writing an Ethics Application. The screening questions the earlier process material supplies, and the limits of that material, are in Step 6: Seeking Ethics Clearance.
What to carry forward
- Panels exist because no code anticipates every circumstance and because someone must assure that researchers considered the issues. The object of review is your reasoning, not your promises.
- The panel protects participants, the organisation and you. Approval is evidence that a competent body examined and accepted your design.
- No approval, no research — and data collected beforehand cannot be used. The second limb is not recoverable by later approval or disclosure.
- Pilot interviews before submission are the most common way people breach the rule while believing they are being careful.
- Where your workplace hosts the study, you need both clearances. One body will accept the other's approval attached to your application, so sequence rather than duplicate.
- Routing is automatic and silent: the role you submit under and the answers you tick decide who reviews your application.
- The source names an advisory role, an application category and a committee it never defines. Get the specifics from your approving body and do not accept invented expansions.
Frequently asked questions
Can I start interviews while my application is being reviewed?
No. The source states that you cannot proceed with your research project without approval from the relevant ethics committees, and that data gathered before clearance cannot be used for your findings. Time spent waiting is best used for literature work, instrument refinement and scheduling that does not involve contacting participants.
I already have data from my day job. Can I use it in my study?
Not on the strength of the supplied material. The rule is stated in terms of data gathered before you have ethics clearance, without an exception for data collected for another purpose. Treat pre-existing organisational data as something to raise explicitly with your approving body before you build a design that depends on it.
Do I really need approval from my employer as well as my institution?
Where your workplace or a related organisation hosts the project, the source says it becomes part of that organisation's business ethics and you need clearance from there as well. It also says the University will accept another organisation's ethics approval when attached to your application, so the two are usually sequenced rather than run as separate parallel efforts.
What happens if I answer a screening question wrongly?
It can reroute your application automatically, without notice, to a different committee whose requirements you have not addressed. The supplied material records a case where a speculative answer about participant characteristics escalated an application to a higher-level committee and it was rejected weeks later. Answer from established fact, and ask before submitting if you cannot establish it.
How long should I allow for ethics approval?
The supplied source states no general timeline and instructs you to check the timelines that apply with each body. The single duration figure anywhere in the material — five rounds of amendment over more than five months — comes from insider research on a dependent group, the hardest category there is, and is presented as an illustration rather than a norm.
What is an E2 application?
The supplied material uses the term once, in describing what research ethics advisors do, and never defines it — nor does it define the committee acronym used in the same sentence. Nothing in the dataset describes application categories or a risk-tier system. Ask the body that will assess you which category your study falls into and what it changes; do not rely on an expansion you have seen guessed at elsewhere.
References and source attribution
- Trochim, W. M. K. 2006, Research Methods Knowledge Base (http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/probform.php) — the source of the excerpt on the system of ethical protections, including the passage on why review panels exist quoted on this page.
- Cooper, D. & Schindler, P. 2008, Business Research Methods, 10th ed., McGraw-Hill — the text the supplied source draws on for its treatment of research ethics.
- Quinlan, C. 2011, Business Research Methods, 1st ed., Cengage Publishing, Chapter 3 — the prescribed reading accompanying the ethics material.
- Swinton, J. 2009, 'Why bother with research ethics?', Journal of Community Nursing, vol. 23, no. 9, pp. 25–27.
- The supplied teaching source: consolidated weekly teaching notes and slide material on research ethics, which supplies the dual approval requirement, the rule on data gathered before clearance, the description of ethics advisory roles, and three case studies stated to be based on fact with fictitious names.
Suggested questions for Ask KEVOS
- List every body whose ethics approval my study needs, and what I have to establish about each before drafting.
- My employer is providing the participants and the data. What does dual approval mean for my sequence and my dates?
- I want to pilot my interview schedule. How do I do that without collecting data before clearance?
- Build a schedule that treats ethics clearance as a hard predecessor to my first interview.
- My design has changed since approval. Help me work out whether this needs an amendment before I proceed.