This page gives you the information you need to apply for ethics clearance for your projects and assessed exercises.

Assessed Exercises

For assessed exercises at all levels:

  1. If your assessed exercise will not involve the participation of other people, then you need not worry about ethical clearance at all (and need not sign the reverse side of the pink assessment submission form).
  2. If your assessed exercise will involved the participation of other people, and you can honestly sign the assessment ethics checklist form, then you need not apply for ethical approval. You should use appropriate introduction and debriefing scripts, and include these together with your signed ethics checklist form as part of your assessment submission.
  3. If your assessed exercise will involve the participation of other people, and will not comply with any one or more of the points on the assessment ethics checklist form contact the chair of the DCS Ethics Committee (Prof Stephen Brewster) for advice on College ethics applications.

Student Projects

For third year, fourth year or MSc projects:

  1. If your project will not involve the participation of other people, then you need not worry about ethical clearance at all.
  2. If your project evaluation will involve the participation of other people and you can honestly sign the project ethics checklist form, then you need not apply for ethical approval. You should use appropriate introduction and debriefing scripts, and include these together with your signed ethics checklist form as part of your project report.
  3. If your evaluation will not comply with any one or more of the points on the project ethics checklist form, then you must complete an ethics approval form, and email it to the chair of the SOCS Ethics Committee (Prof Stephen Brewster) for approval (routine applications will be directly considered by the SOCS ethics committee; more unusual applications1 will be referred to the College Ethics Committee for consideration, in which case the supervisor must make the request for approval). To ease processing of requests, please use a subject line of “Request for ethics approval: your name” in emails requesting approval. You must read the British Psycological Society Code of Conduct before completing the ethics approval form, and submit your consent form (example consent form) and information sheet (example information sheet ) with this form. You must not start your evaluation until you have received approval in response to your application.

You should use appropriate introduction and debriefing scripts, and include these together with your completed ethics approval form, consent form and information sheet as part of your project report.

Student projects are not covered by any prior ethical clearance that has been given for a similar project to another student or to supervisors. For student projects, ethical approval is given to the student, not to the project. The responsibility for signing the checklist form and for getting ethical clearance if necessary is a joint responsibility between both student and supervisor.

Participants must not feel under any pressure to take part in a study. This means that neither the student nor the supervisor should be in any position of authority over the participants. The project cannot therefore require that participants perform any task that is mandatory for fulfilling study requirements for university courses that they are enrolled in.

In all cases, all participants must explicitly state that they agree to take part. This means that observational studies where participants are observed doing a task in their normal lives may only take place provided that the participants have explicitly agreed to this observation taking place. Studies that observe participants' behaviour without their knowledge may not be undertaken by students.

Projects that use participants for Requirements Elicitation must also comply with the 12-point checklist. If the Requirements Elicitation process will violate any of the 12 ethics points (eg: children under the age of 16; position of authority), then the student must submit an ethics approval form to the Department Ethics Committee and must gain such approval before any Requirements Elicitation takes place. The Ethics Committee will typically approve such requests provided that the interview methods are considered reasonable, and the data will not be published.

Only data collected for the purpose of the project may be used in the project. This means that data collected for other purposes may not be used. We cannot, therefore, use student marks data from previous years to test out a system to record marks, we cannot use real patient data from a local doctor's surgery to test database tool, we cannot use students' essays from previous years to test out a plagiarism system - even if the data is anonymised. In some cases therefore, students will have to use “pretend” data in order to evaluate the worth of their system; this should sufficient for them to demonstrate their technical expertise (which is, after all, the main point of the project.) Only if the participant has given permission for the data to be used for a particular purpose may be it be used for that purpose.

Notes:

  1. The following will always be referred to the College Ethics Committee: studies involving participants under the age of 16, and studies involving participants with an impairment that may limit their understanding or communication.

Research Projects

For projects conducted by DCS academic or research staff, MSci, MRes and PhD students:

  1. If your project will involve the participation of other people, you need to submit an application for approval using the College Ethics web site. You should wait for notification of approval, and for a College ethics reference number, before starting the experiment. You should quote your College ethics reference number on your consent form (example consent form) and information sheet (example information sheet).