University of Tasmania, Australia

The HREC consists of people from varying backgrounds and expertise with membership changing on a regular basis. The committee includes several lay people and a community member such as a priest or religious representative, lawyers, as well as members with experience and/or expertise in the social science area. 

Your application needs to be clear and easily comprehensible for a non-specialist audience.

Both of the Human Research Ethics Committees of the HREC (Tasmania) Network are constituted in accordance with the guidelines set out in the National Statement and the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research which establish basic principles and values for ethically good human research:

Respect for persons
Researchers must treat individuals as autonomous agents and protect persons with diminished autonomy.

Research merit and integrity
Has the potential to make a contribution to knowledge and understanding, to improve social welfare and individual well being. Research must be designed appropriately and conducted by persons with suitable experience qualifications and competence.

Beneficence
Maximise possible benefits and minimise possible harm (physical, psychological, emotional, economic or social).

Justice
Distributive and procedural. Distributive justice: who bears the burden and who receives the benefits of the research? Procedural Justice: ‘Fair treatment’ in the recruitment of participants and the review of research. The use of public funds may also raise questions of justice.

Projects undertaken as a purely teaching and learning activity are not subject to HREC requirements, but if the staff member concerned is doing the project as research, it's a different matter. HREC approval is necessary before research can be published, so as long as you doesn't want to publish there's no need for her to obtain HREC clearance but If you do hope to publish, you’ll need to submit a minimal risk application.

The Faculty aims to provide you with feedback within 2-3 weeks of receiving your application. You need to allow time to make amendments prior to submission to the HREC. Once submitted to HREC, Minimal risk applications are reviewed by the HREC Chair and you can expect to receive feedback within two weeks.

Full applications are reviewed by a meeting of the HREC committee. The HREC must receive papers two weeks in advance of meeting dates.  Please refer to this calendar of submission and review dates for ethics applications. You will generally receive feedback from HREC within a week of their full committee meeting.

You can expect HREC to raise points to be amended in applications before approval will be granted. You need to therefore allow time for changes and resubmission.

Before you begin your research, you should think about the way in which you are going to store any hard copy (for example, papers, surveys, interview transcripts, pictures, drawings) or electronic data you collect (for example, Word documents, mp3 interviews, jpg image files).

You must ensure that all your data are stored in accordance with the Australian Code for the Responsible Conduct of Research.

The main issues to consider in terms of data storage are privacy and secure access. 

Firstly, while you are performing your research, you must store any information considered confidential so that it cannot be accessed by anyone outside the research project. 

Secondly, when you are writing up your report, it must be presented in a way that people with access can reliably check your findings.

The situation may arise where not all consent forms are received for students in a classroom setting and/or not all parents have given permission. What should you do? Consider the implications of this in terms of:

• Can the students without consent be relocated while the study is conducted? 
• Is this justifiable? Or practical? 
• What other solutions might there be? 
• Can they still participate in the ‘task’ but not have their data collected and used in the research project?

Issues with consent also arise if you are asking students to participate in research and there stands to be power relations that could result in students feeling a sense of pressure to participate.  For example, if you are a lecturer and you invite the students in your class to participate in your study, they might feel pressure to participate thinking that in some way their grades might be affected by their participation (or not).

A way to get around this is to invite a non-teaching colleague to explain the study and deal with all the paperwork (for example, information sheets, consent forms). The researcher (who is also the lecturer) wouldn’t find out who agreed to participate until the end of semester, when all grades have been submitted. Then, analysis of the data can begin without the potential power relations playing out.

This is an issue as it involves several people and open discussion.  So, can you really ensure confidentiality for members of focus groups?  If not, what should you tell prospective participants?  Be full and frank in your presentation of this issue – acknowledge that you can encourage all focus group participants to maintain it, but you cannot guarantee it.

Occasionally a specified time for withdrawal from a study is required by the Committee, rather than the participant being able to withdraw ‘at any point in the study/interview/questionnaire’. How do you determine a specified time allowed for participants to withdraw? When is it ‘too late’?

If your project already has approval from a NHMRC registered Australian HREC, you should complete a Social Sciences prior approval application form.

As well as the Social Sciences prior approval application form, researchers must submit the following documents to the HREC Ethics Officer:

A copy of the approved application

A copy of the formal letter of approval  o Locally specific Participant Information Sheets and Consent Forms for each participant group (if applicable)

Questionnaires, interview questions, and any other study tools that will be given to the participants (if applicable)

Recruitment posters, email or telephone preambles etc (if applicable)

Any relevant approvals from other institutions or copies of any other relevant documentation.  

If your project already has ethics approval from the Social Sciences HREC, and you want to make an amendment to the approved project, you must submit a Social Sciences amendment form, plus any supporting documentation (with changes shown in the 'Track Changes function of Microsoft word')

You must submit a Social Sciences amendment form, plus any supporting documentation (with changes shown in the 'Track Changes function of Microsoft Word')

Ethics approval is granted for a maximum period of 4 years subject to annual reporting. If your research is still continuing after this time, you must complete an extension request form and submit it to the HREC Ethics Officer Katharine Shaw (katharine.shaw@utas.edu.au)

Annually, on the date your project was approved, you will receive an automatically generated email reminder from the HREC (Tas) Network database requesting that you complete a progress report form about your project.  To keep your approval valid you must complete a Progress Report Form and submit it to the HREC Ethics Officer, Katharine Shaw (katharine.shaw@utas.edu.au).

At the completion of your project, you must complete an HREC final report form and submit it to the HREC Ethics Officer, Katharine Shaw (katharine.shaw@utas.edu.au). You may attach any publications or abstracts of publications resulting from your research.