Applying for ethical approval

The University's ethics application process for students and staff, approval pathways, and forms.

UWE Bristol Handbook of Research Ethics

UWE Bristol Handbook of Research Ethics (PDF)

These procedures apply to all staff (including Emeritus or visiting researchers) and students conducting or contributing to research which take place within the University or on projects managed by the University. They also apply to individuals who are not members of the University but who are engaged in such research activities involving University premises, facilities, students, or staff. UWE Bristol staff collaborating with, or on secondment to, other institutions should have a favourable ethical opinion from UWE Bristol or another appropriately constituted Research Ethics Committee (REC) (which would need to be ratified by UWE Bristol).

To apply for ethical approval, you should follow the appropriate routes indicated under the headings below:

Staff and postgraduate research (PGR) students
Undergraduate and postgraduate taught (PGT)/Masters students
All research which involves animals of any species (including animal by-products) must have approval by the Animal Welfare and Ethics Sub-Committee (AWESC).

Staff and postgraduate research (PGR) students

If you are conducting research involving human participants, and/or their tissue or data, please refer to the new Worktribe Ethics system section (live from 1 August 2024) below.

For research projects without human participants, please refer to the UWE Bristol Handbook of Research Ethics (PDF), which aims to help researchers think through the issues and submit an appropriate application for ethical approval.

More about the new Worktribe Ethics system

Undergraduate and postgraduate taught (PGT)/Masters students

The Student Ethical Review record (requires UWE Bristol login) has been designed to assist supervisors to review the ethics of undergraduate and postgraduate taught student research projects and assess if they are low or high risk. It also enables the University to have an auditable record of supervisor assessments, which meets our need for quality assurance. As such, it is a University requirement for all supervisors of undergraduate or postgraduate taught student research to complete a record for each student they supervise.

If a student application is found to be high risk having completed the Record, please submit a full ethics application to the new Worktribe Ethics system (live from 1 August 2024).

Applying for AWESC approval

Applications for student research projects (at all levels) must be approved by AWESC. Supervisors will need to apply for approval for all undergraduate and postgraduate taught student projects that they are supervising. Postgraduate research students are expected to apply for approval, but this will need to be done with the approval of their Director of Studies (further details are given in the research application form).

If your proposal is a research project and involves human participants as research subjects and animals/ABPs, then you will need to complete the appropriate sections of the research application form to allow ethical scrutiny of your research in respect of use of animals/ABPs; and the UWE Bristol research ethics application form to allow ethical scrutiny of your research in respect of the human participant research subjects.

If you are unsure which form to complete or would like any further guidance, then please contact the AWESC Officer (researchgovernance@uwe.ac.uk).

The ethics application process

New Worktribe Ethics system (live from 1 August 2024)

The University is delighted to announce our new Worktribe Ethics cloud-based platform.

The new collaborative platform is a joined-up system linking to the Project Information Management System (PIMS), leading to a more streamlined and efficient process for ethical review and ensuring all the information is contained in one central place. The system will also provide clear visibility of the application for each stage of the process providing a single end to end solution for ethical reviews and approvals for human participants, their tissue, their data and applications for research with animals and animal by-products.

Commencing 1 August 2024

The Worktribe system will be available to all staff and postgraduate research (PGR) students. UG/MSc ‘high risk’ taught programme applications will be submitted electronically by the Supervisor through the new Worktribe Ethics module.

After 1 August 2024, when you go into the Worktribe system (UWE Bristol login required), you will see an ethics tab which, when you click on it, allows you into the new ethics system. After 1 August, it will no longer be possible to submit applications via the old system. Amendments and Revision and Resubmission will also take place as part of the new Worktribe Ethics system.

Worktribe

The new system is intuitive for anyone who has already used Worktribe. However, a basic short training module for applicants (UWE Bristol login required) is provided below (with or without subtitles). The Research Ethics Team will be happy to provide advice on request as applicants begin to engage with the system.

Worktribe Ethics System training module

Worktribe Ethics System training module (subtitled)

If any difficulties are encountered with access (after 1 August 2024), please contact the Research Ethics Team (researchethics@uwe.ac.uk).

Applications made prior to 1 August 2024

New applications

Please follow the existing instructions under ‘How to apply’ below, until 1 August 2024. For applications which have already been considered, and where the decision is approved with conditions, or revise and resubmit, the following applies:

Approved with conditions

Please provide your responses on an annotated copy of the letter sent to you and include copies of revised documentation and reply to researchethics@uwe.ac.uk or researchgovernance@uwe.ac.uk for AWESC applications.

Revise and resubmit

Please create a new application on the Worktribe Ethics system.

Amendments

College of Arts, Technology and Environment (CATE) and AWESC amendments to be processed on respective SharePoint sites (UWE Bristol login required):

CATE

AWESC

College of Health, Science and Society (CHSS)/College of Business and Law (CBL) – please complete an amendment form which will be processed manually by sending your completed form to researchethics@uwe.ac.uk, or researchgovernance@uwe.ac.uk for AWESC applications.

Supervisors of undergraduate and taught postgraduate students will still use the Student Ethical Review Record, and only if ‘high ethical risk’ will these need to proceed to full application.

What documentation do you need to provide?

You are required to provide the following details:

Research proposal or project design
Participant information sheet and consent form (if more than one for different aspects of the project, you need to include them all)
All staff and students must provide a UWE Bristol privacy notice
Undergraduate and M-level students should follow the Policies, procedures and guidance
Questionnaire/survey
External ethics approval and any supporting documentation (if appropriate)

When do you need to apply?

You must allow six weeks for your application to be processed. Please note, over the summer and the Christmas and Easter vacations, your application may take up to eight weeks when scrutineers are not available to review applications.

How will your application be reviewed?

Applications are logged by the Research Ethics Administrative team, and sent out to members of the Ethics Committees for scrutiny. Scrutineers use a checklist, Scrutineer's Review Form (PDF), to ensure that applicants have addressed the necessary points in their applications. Comments are collated and then passed to the Ethics Committee Chairs to make a decision on approval. Often further work or clarification is needed before full approval can be given (make sure you factor this into your timetable).

You cannot start collecting data until you have full ethical approval for that activity.

Potential outcomes of an ethics application are:

full approval
approval with conditions
revise and resubmit
not approved.

You will be given feedback to help you to make your application better. It is very unusual for an application to be ‘not approved’.

Once you have ethical approval:

make sure that what you do is only what you have been given approval to do
if you haven't got consent from your participants to share your data or use in ways not specified in your consent form, you can't do it!

The NHS and other research ethics committees

If your research project involves NHS patients, service users, organs, tissue, data or other bodily material, or is to be conducted on NHS property, please refer to our Health and Social Care research page.

If you have ethical approval from another external research ethics committee, for example from another Higher Education Institution, you will need to email this to your FREC or to RESC for ratification at researchethics@uwe.ac.uk.

Amendments

If things change, you need to let the Committee know, and may need to apply for further approval, for example changes to participant groups, protocols, or extensions. You can do this by completing an amendment form (DOC). This can generally be processed quite quickly.

Urgent approval in exceptional circumstances

If you need an urgent decision on your application, a special request for exceptional approval can be made by contacting the Research Ethics Administrative team at researchethics@uwe.ac.uk, tel: +44 (0)117 32 81167. This option is only available to staff and not to undergraduate, postgraduate taught or postgraduate research students, and cannot be used to support a retrospective ethical approval.

If a project has multiple methods of data collection that do not require fast approval, then the researcher should request urgent processing only for the relevant part.

The researcher must accept that there are no guarantees that an urgent decision can be made by their deadline. It is dependent on the capacity of others.

If the application is of poor quality, then it will cease to be treated as urgent.

The RESC/FREC reserves the right to delay processing urgent applications if the necessary administrative and scrutiny resources are not available to reach a decision with the urgency requested.