Faculty of Science:
Ethics in Human Research - Frustrations and Solutions
The ethics application procedure works well if you know exactly what you want to do, and have
the time to submit the application. It does not work well in the following
situations.
- The research is part of (say) a one-semester graduate class where students
are proposing and developing a study as part of their work. They may find it
hard to supply the details required by the ethics review process if they
want to submit it in a timely fashion.
Possible solution: Introduce this requirement very early on, and
schedule it on their critical path.
- The research is highly iterative, where the study procedure/methodology
may change rapidly (this is common in discount usability evaluation
methodology as used in Computer Science).
Possible solution: try and predict what methods you may use and
include these on your application. You can also include what will be common
across all e.g., that informed consent will be used, no deception will be
used, etc.