Good Practice in Research: Ethics of Research Involving Human Participants and Personal Data

New

Getting things right is critical when working with human participants and/or personal data. Non-ethical research may put the participants at risk or damage the validity of your findings. Moreover, appropriate ethical reflection is a feature of high quality research and goes beyond an approval letter from a research ethics committee. Taking an ethics-by-numbers approach to ethical approval, without due reflection of the specifics concerns involved may lead you to unnecessarily restrict your research. It may also mean you’re less prepared to handle ongoing or unexpected ethical considerations e.g. decision-making in fieldwork or how best to interpret and disseminate data.

On this course, you will learn the principles underpinning ethical research and how to manage issues like seeking informed consent, recruiting vulnerable people, processing personal data, balancing participants’ interests with academic freedom and societal obligations, re-using personal data, respecting participant autonomy and reacting to unexpected events. Using case studies and group discussion, this course will explore best practice for working with human participants and personal data and provide opportunities for you to share your experiences and learn from others.

• Postdocs across all disciplines
• Researchers
• Postgraduates
• Please see our eligibility criteria for further information

Number of sessions: 1

By the end of the course, you’ll be able to:

• Justify why research ethics matters and refer to relevant Ethics Codes of Practice
• Apply the principles of ethical research to your work
• Understand the ethical review framework at the University and what type of research may require ethical approval
• Understand the legal and ethical obligations as regards to personal data
• Define personal data and explain where data protections do not apply in a research context
• Locate and refer to University guidance on academic research involving personal data
• Navigate the issues in using and re-using of personal data and sensitive personal data
• Identify which exemptions for academic research applies to your research project

• Presentations, case studies and interactive discussions

The instructor is Dr Rhys Morgan, Research Governance and Integrity Officer, or Dr Sinead Healy of the Research Strategy Office (RSO).

• Yearly

• Postdocs
• Skills Development