If the University of Warwick is not the sole lead organisation for the research and another Higher Education Institution (such as the lead or co-lead) has granted formal research ethics approval, it may not be necessary to also gain BSREC/HSSREC ethics approval. However, BSREC/HSSREC will require a record of this external approval along with confirmation that Warwick's role in the project is covered by this. Please submit a copy of the ethics approval granted to bsrec@warwick.ac.uk or hssrec@warwick.ac.uk, depending on which Faculty you are in, before the research commences. The BSREC/HSSREC Secretary will advise as to whether further ethical review is required. Where Warwick is the lead institution, ethical review is expected to be conducted by Warwick.

If your research involves the NHS, Social Care, work with animals, the Ministry of Defence, or Prison Services, you will need to check what approvals are required from the respective Committees below.

National Health Service Research Ethics Committee NHS RECLink opens in a new window

Social Care Research Ethics Committee (SCREC)Link opens in a new window

Animal Welfare and Ethical Review Body (AWERB)

Ministry of Defence Research Ethics Committee (MODREC)Link opens in a new window

Research at HMPPS - HM Prison and Probation Service - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)Link opens in a new window

If the University of Warwick is not the sole lead organisation for the research and another Higher Education institution (such as the lead or co-lead) has granted formal research ethics approval, it may not be necessary to also gain ethics approval from Warwick. However, BSREC/HSSREC will require a record of this external approval along with confirmation that Warwick's role in the project is covered by this. Please submit a copy of the ethics approval granted to bsrec@warwick.ac.uk or hssrec@warwick.ac.uk depending on which Faculty you are in, before the research commences (or your role in the research commences). The BSREC/HSSREC Secretary will advise as to whether further ethical review is required. Where Warwick is the lead institution, ethical review is expected to be conducted by Warwick.

As above, if a project already has ethical approval from a similar institution, Warwick would not seek to duplicate that approval. You may be able to contact your previous institution to see whether the approval can be carried over so that you can complete the project without having to duplicate ethical review. You would just need to send evidence of the existing approval to bsrec@warwick.ac.uk or hssrec@warwick.ac.uk depending on which Faculty you are in. However, you should consider how far into the project you are and how much work will be conducted under your role as a Warwick member of staff. For example, if you are one year into a five-year project, it would be advisable to gain ethical approval from Warwick.

If the data was collected for part of an evaluation, or another reason other than research purposes, and you now find that this data will be useful for a research project, you should submit a secondary data application to BSREC/HSSREC to be able to use the data for research. In most cases, this will be reviewed through the Light Touch route. Please consider what consent was gained to be able to use the data for research and how feasible it is to gain consent if this was not in place.

If you are not sure at this stage, it will be difficult to complete an ethics application because detailed information about the project is required to be able to conduct ethical review. It may be best to conduct the evaluation, as you would do normally, but include a statement at the start of the evaluation asking students/participants to consent to their data being used for future research purposes, subject to ethical review. This way, if the data does prove useful, you can then submit a secondary data application for ethical review and will have consent in place to use the data for research purposes.

Along with a fully completed application form, you will need to submit any relevant supporting documents such as: Participant Information Leaflets, Consent Forms, questionnaires, interview schedules/topic guides, invitation emails, leaflets, posters, draft recruitment emails/social media posts, and any other participant-facing documents relevant to the project. Depending on the project, you may also need to provide a Risk Assessment, copies of local ethical approval (e.g., if the research is taking place in another country), evidence of any permissions required to carry out the study (e.g., if permission is required from a gatekeeper to access a certain set of participants). The Committee will need to review anything which will be presented to participants.

The Committee will need to see what is being presented to participants to be able to make an informed decision. If only desk-based work is required to be able to develop these materials, think about the timing of when you are applying for ethical review and whether you should submit your application when the project is more developed. However, if you need to conduct work with human participants to be able to develop materials (e.g., you will hold a focus group to develop a questionnaire), please explain this clearly within the application form and provide as much information as you are able to at this stage. Once the application has been approved, you can conduct the work to develop the next stage of materials, final versions of these can then be submitted as an amendment once they have been developed.

For interviews, draft versions of interview topic guides can be accepted as it is understood that interviews are often conversational and researchers will not stick rigorously to a script. However, the Committee will still need to see the kinds of topics that will be covered.

No, it is not mandatory to use the BSREC/HSSREC templates available, but it is strongly recommended that you refer to these for guidance on what to include in each document. There is also certain governance information in these templates which must be included, such as details of the Head of Research Governance for independent complaints, the DPO for data concerns and the University’s Research Privacy Notice.

While it will be useful to use the existing templates as a starting point, it is advised that you must keep your participants in mind when drafting any materials which they will be presented with. For example, is the language appropriate for their literacy levels? The Participants Information Leaflet(s) and Consent Forms should be written for your participants, not for the Committee.

For applicants who are members of staff, your Head of Department (or equivalent) will need to sign your application form. For student projects, only the Supervisor will need to sign the application form (no HoD signature is required for student projects). It is acceptable to type the HoD/Supervisor’s name in the signature box and cc. them into the email submitting the application to confirm their approval.

No, Committee review is determined by the Faculty in which you are based, not by the type of research. Each Committee is comprised of members with various expertise, including SEM representation on HSSREC and Arts/Social Sciences representation on BSREC. However, if your project requires specialist knowledge, it may be considered by the other Committee at the discretion of the Chair/Secretariat.

The application needs to provide enough detail so that another researcher will understand exactly how the project will work, with particular focus on the aspect of the study involving human participants. The reviewers will be mainly interested in what you are doing with the human participants/their data/tissue and how any potential harms or risks are being mitigated against. The more detail provided will reduce the number of queries the committee may have about the project. This needs to be clear and written in a lay manner so that a non-specialist in the field can understand the study. Technical terms should be avoided where possible.

No, questionnaires are usually considered self-consenting so it is not necessary for participants to complete a separate consent form for you to keep. Instead, a statement should be included in the introduction to the survey to state that by completing the survey, participants are consenting for their data to be used in the study. An information leaflet should still be provided to explain what the study is about, and what will happen to the data etc., but this can be built into the introduction and doesn’t need to be a separate document. It should be clear to participants how they can withdraw from the study if they change their mind (e.g., by closing their browser). It should also be clear whether participants can withdraw their data after participating, which for anonymous surveys will often not be possible. Please see the template abridged PIL for guidance on what to include at the start of a questionnaire/survey.

Participants need to be aware that they can withdraw participation from a study at any time without giving a reason but it needs to be clear how they do this. For online surveys, participants can change their mind at any time by closing the browser. However, it must be made clear that once responses have been submitted, it will not be possible to withdraw data from the study as responses are anonymous and it will not be possible to identify individual responses.

Personal data refers to data which relate to a living individual who can be identified:

from those data, or

from those data and other information which is in the possession of, or is likely to come into the possession of, the data controller, and includes any expression of opinion about the individual and any indication of the intentions of the data controller or any other person in respect of the individual. Further guidance from the Information Commissioner’s Office can be found here.

Pseudonymised data means replacing any identifying characteristics of data with a value which does not allow the data subject to be directly identified. E.g., replacing the participant’s real name with a false name or participant number. The researcher or data controller will keep a key separately to the data which links the real name to the false name/number. This is different to anonymous data and only offers limited protection, as it still allows identification by an indirect means. It is therefore still classed as personal data and should follow the same guidance.

Anonymisation is the process of removing personally identifiable information from data sets so that an individual cannot be identified by the remaining data set. Simply redacting an individual’s name does not necessarily make the data anonymous. There is still a risk of indirect re-identification if the data set could be linked to a data subject by a combination of other data, e.g., age, postcode, medical condition, job title. The more information included in each data set, the greater the risk of identification when combined. Small data sets and specific characteristics e.g., ethnicity or gender may also increase the chance of identifying individuals. The Information Commissioner’s Office guidance on the principles of anonymising data can be found here.

Whilst blacking out eyes of photographs or digitally blurring images can distort features, it is entirely possible that a subject could still be identified by friends or family. Since complete anonymity of faces is almost impossible to achieve, informed consent should always be sought from participants. Applicants should be aware of promising anonymity where this may not be possible.

Researchers should not be sent, or have access to any identifiable, personal data that is outside of their professional/clinical role, without the appropriate permissions in place e.g., consent from the organisation or Confidentiality Advisory Group approval (CAG) for large NHS patient datasets. The data should be anonymised by an individual at the organisation supplying the data, who has appropriate permissions to access this data, before this reaches the researcher or University. The terms of use for this data should be outlined in a Data Sharing Agreement provided by the organisation releasing the data. Researchers should contact R&IS for any agreements to be signed off by an appropriate individual on behalf of the University, and not by the researcher themselves.

Not necessarily. It would be the responsibility of the researcher receiving the data to check with their organisation on the ethical review requirements for secondary analysis of previously collected data. However, before any research data is sent to a third party, it is your responsibility to note the terms in which this data was originally collected. This relates to what purpose the data were originally collected for (i.e., was this limited to use for research purposes), the consent given for the data collection (i.e. was it specified that the data would not be shared with third parties) and in what format the data will be transferred (i.e. anonymised, identifiable). You do not need individual consent to share anonymous research data with a third party but you must make sure there is no chance any individuals can be identified from the data set. Please contact R&IS to discuss data sharing agreements before any data is transferred out of the University. To use research data for commercial purposes, please contact Warwick Ventures.

The University recommends using Qualtrics or Bristol Online Surveys to distribute online surveys/questionnaires. These tools have been approved by the University’s Information Governance team as secure for hosting data. Please note Survey Monkey is not currently a University-approved service.

Opt-out consent is permissible in certain projects where the participants are not considered vulnerable or the study is not investigating a sensitive/intrusive topic. The process must be clearly detailed in and justification for why this is considered appropriate should be provided.

There are multiple acceptable approaches to gaining electronic consent. This may be advisable when research is being conducted remotely and where there will be no opportunity for participants to physically sign consent forms. Recording verbal consent using an Information and Data Compliance (IDC) approved platform such as MS Teams is one option. Asking participants to print a consent form, sign it, scan it, and return it is another option. Using 'e-consent' signatures is another option. The HRA and MHRA have published useful guidance on this topic which can be accessed here.

No, all research agreements/contracts should be signed off by an appropriate individual on behalf of the University, not the researcher or the supervisor. Please contact R&IS for guidance.

It depends on the age of the children, their competency and what you are asking them to do. Good practice is usually to obtain consent from the parents as well but this depends on the nature of the study. The approach taken should be appropriate, detailed and justified within the application. If you are working with schools, they may have their own guidance and practices which are recommended. You should make in clear within the application that you have discussed this with the school/provider and are following their recommendation. The MRC/ESRC provides further guidance on this.

Yes, the current contact for complaints is the Head of Research Governance/Deputy Director of Research & Impact Services. Contact details can be found in the template Participant Information Leaflet.

No, the application needs to detail exactly how you will ensure compliance with the data protection regulations/principles and how you will mitigate any risk of accidental disclosure of data, especially where this is personal or special category data. The application form asks specific questions about this, which should be answered in full.

University policy is that research data should be reviewed after 10 years to see if the data needs to be retained or can be deleted. This applies to research data which would be necessary to back up publications resulting from the data if the published results were challenged. Similarly, consent forms should be retained for this period of time in case of a challenge. Consent forms should be stored separately to research data.

For student projects or projects where the results will not be published, research data can be deleted as soon as it is no longer required. This will often be after the student has completed their course and the final grade is given.

Please note that research data is separate from personal data collected to run the study (e.g., names and contact details of participants to arrange interviews). Personal data should be deleted as soon as it is no longer required.

Yes, a small token as a ‘thank you’ can be offered to research participants but this must be appropriate and proportionate to the amount of time/level of involvement required from the participant in the study. Payments must not be excessive so that they could be seen as a bribe or to coerce people into taking part in a study. In some cases cash rewards can be appropriate and preferable (e.g., giving participants autonomy over how to spend their reward - cultural circumstances and customs should also be taken into account). In other cases, vouchers may be more appropriate as a small token of thanks for taking part. Researchers should give consideration to which vouchers are most appropriate for their participants. Please see the University's current procurement contract which recommends Love2Shop Vouchers which can be spent in a number of outlets. The chance to be included in a prize draw is also another common incentive used in research although researchers should be as transparent as possible about participants' chances of winning. See further guidance from the Heath Research Authority.

Please note that researchers should not pay participants using their own money. If a project is not funded, and the researcher does not have a spending allowance to cover the cost, the researcher's department should be contacted in the first instance to see if funding can be provided to cover any payments to participants.

Social media can be used as a method of recruitment but consideration should be given to whose account will be used to advertise the study, how this will be done, and where the advertisement will be placed. Using personal accounts should be avoided where possible. The advertisement text used will need to be reviewed by BSREC/HSSREC. Permissions must be sought from the administrator of any specific groups targeted, before posting any recruitment materials.

Further information on the use of social media in research can be found here.

No, quotes and opinions posted on social media do not always count as publicly available data, and in many cases should not be used for research purposes without permission/consent from the individual, regardless of privacy settings. Studies gathering information this way must also be subject to ethical review.

Further information on the use of social media in research can be found here.

Yes, this is for audit purposes, and so it is easy to keep track of documents should amendments be required to the study as it progresses. It also makes sure that the study team are using the correct and latest version of information leaflets and consent forms.

You should first consider whether it is necessary to collect this personal data. If it is not required for your research, in keeping with the principle of data minimisation, it would be best practice to not collect it. However, if this is required information you should allow a free text response where possible. Further guidance can be found here.

Yes, while a Service Evaluation is distinct from a “research activity”, it can be beneficial and even recommended to publish your findings. Published outputs need to be appropriately contextualised and described, and it is important that service evaluation activity is not misrepresented as research. While research activity seeks to derive new and generalisable knowledge, the goals of a service evaluation are more narrow, and this should be clearly communicated in any publications.