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?!

Hi,

my ethical approval was such a stressful experience as my research involved medical tests on children.

You will be fine.

Thank you, my supervisors were basically happy with my first draft, I just have to make a few amendments then I can submit it, hopefully it will get through the panel first time.