Tagged / ethics

Important update regarding human DNA from acellular materials

Guidance, Research Ethics

The revised Governance Arrangement for Research Ethics Committees document was released recently.

Amongst updates to incorporate legal, policy and operational developments, following a public consultation by the Human Tissue Authority, research involving human DNA extracted from acellular material is now included in the document, as requiring NHS Research Ethics Committee review.

If you are collecting ‘relevant materials‘ and rendering them acellular, then storage of the samples does not require a HTA license – however, a license is required for distribution of the samples, or if you are extracting DNA from these materials.

Please get in touch if you have any queries or wish to discuss the samples being collected/stored at BU.

EoIs invited for BU Ethics Panel Chairs and Deputy Chairs

Research Ethics

Expressions of interest are invited for the Chairs and Deputy Chairs of the Social Science and Humanities Ethics Panel and the Science, Technology and Health Ethics Panel. These prestigious and honorary roles work across the university to champion the highest ethical standards in research undertaken by staff and students.

This document provides further information about the roles and the application process.

Expressions of interest, consisting of a CV and brief statement outlining suitability for the chair/deputy chair role, should be submitted to RKEO (researchethics@bournemouth.ac.uk) by 5pm on Friday 9 November 2018.

For an informal discussion about the roles please contact one of the current Chairs:

  • Dr Sean Beer, Chair of the Social Science and Humanities Ethics Panel
  • Prof Holger Schutkowski, Chair of the Science, Technology and Health Ethics Panel

If you have any questions regarding the process, please email Sarah Bell/Suzy Wignall using the researchethics@bournemouth.ac.uk email address.

New publication by CMMPH Visiting Faculty Dr. Luyben

international, open access, Publishing, Research Ethics, writing

Congratulations to Dr. Ans Luyben on her latest co-authored midwifery publication: ‘Conscientious objection to participation in abortion by midwives and nurses: a systematic review of reasons’ in the Open Access journal BMC Medical Ethics.  The UK co-authors are linked with Liverpool John Moores University and the University of Liverpool, whilst the third co-author is from Germany.  Ans works in Swtzerland and she is Visiting Faculty in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH).

 

Congratulations!

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

Free online course! – Improving Healthcare Through Clinical Research

Research Ethics, Training

Interested in clinical research and what’s involved? Are you contemplating a career in healthcare or the life sciences, or, do you want to find out more about the role of clinical research in improving healthcare?

If you’ve answered yes to any of the above questions, then why not sign up to FutureLearn’s Improving Healthcare Through Clinical Research course?

The course will be available from 21st May, via https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/clinical-research

It is completely free and all online, lasting 4 weeks – registration open now!

This course has been certified by the CPD Certification Service as conforming to continuing professional development principles. By completing the course you will have achieved 16 hours of CPD time.

*Book now* Research Application training- Spaces still available on the RKE Development Framework Pre-Award Pathway

Research Ethics

The research and knowledge exchange (RKE) development framework offers a range of opportunities for academics at all career stages to develop their skills, knowledge and capabilities in relation to research and knowledge exchange. The pre-award pathway offers all of the starting information required by academics and researchers at BU to undertake research bidding.

Research Ethics at BU

All research being conducted at BU falls under the Ethics and Governance policies at BU. This session will offer Academics and Researchers an understanding of the Ethics procedures and Research Governance policies at BU.

10 April 2017 10.00 – 11.00 Lansdowne Campus

Getting started on applying for research funding

This session will explore how best to adapt research in response to the changing external environment. The workshop will provide information on the best routes to funding based upon career stages and also introduce how RKEO can help.

Thursday 13 April 2017 09.00 – 10.00 Lansdowne Campus

Pre-award finance

This session will introduce researchers to Full Economic Costs (fEC), transparant approaches to costing (TRAC) and the BU Financial Regulations. Guidance will be offered on how to cost projects in a way that funders will find acceptable. Training will be provided on producing the ‘Justificaton of Resources’ document required by many funders.

Thursday 13 April 2017 10.30 – 11.30 Lansdowne Campus

BU processes for applying for funding

This workshop will provide a short introduction/refresher on how to apply for external funding at BU. The latest update on the policies and processes will be introduced as part of this short session.

By the end of the session you will be familiar with the processes required to apply for funding at BU.

Thursday 13 April 2017 13.30 – 14.30 Lansdowne Campus

Quality approvals at BU

This course is aimed at those who are, or wish to be, a designated Faculty and UET Activity Quality/Peer reviewers. This session will provide an introduction/refresher of academic review policies at BU.

Thursday 13 April 2017 15.00 – 16.00 Lansdowne Campus

Chapter on Ethics in Film by Kip Jones published by Routledge

9781138784291Kip Jones’ Chapter, “’Styles of Good Sense’ Ethics, Filmmaking and Scholarship” has recently been published in Routledge’s new volume, The Routledge International Handbook on Narrative and Life History.

Written by leading international scholars from the main contributing perspectives and disciplines, The Routledge International Handbook on Narrative and Life History seeks to capture the range and scope as well as the considerable complexity of the field of narrative study and life history work by situating these fields of study within the historical and contemporary context.

ck-rrf8wgaa6cet-jpg_large

Relishing the chance to cite not only C.E. Scott from The Question of Ethics Nietzsche, Foucault, Heidegger, but also Norma Desmond from Sunset Strip, Jones said, “The Handbook was a welcomed chance, once and for all, to sort the subtleties of ethical considerations in arts-based research approaches such as film”.  Jones is joined in the Handbook‘s discussion on Ethics  by such luminaries as Arthur Frank, Laurel Richardson, Caroline Ellis, and Norman Denzin.

Jones’ Chapter is available now on Brian and Academia.edu and the Handbook will shortly be in the BU Libraries.

 

Congratulations to BU Visiting Faculty Dr. Sam Rowlands

Publishing, writing

sam-rowlandsDr. Sam Rowlands, FHSS Visiting Faculty, has just published an interesting article on ‘On being an expert witness in sexual and reproductive health’.   The paper will appear in the Journal of Family Planning & Reproductive Health Care [1].  In this article Sam highlights that expert witnesses need to be able to apply appropriate legal tests to the evidence, to deal with the range of expert opinion on a matter, and explain clearly what constitutes an appropriate standard of care for a clinician in their discipline and specialty. They must be aware of pitfalls such as being sued for substandard work and being reported to their professional regulator for straying outside their area of expertise. Expert witnesses must be truly independent and ideally their reports should be the same whoever they receive their instructions from.

 

Congratulations!

Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen

CMMPH

 

Reference:

Rowlands, S.  ‘On being an expert witness in sexual and reproductive health’. J Fam Plann Reprod Health Care doi:10.1136/jfprhc-2015-101385 (forthcoming/online first)

UKRO Conference Report – important EU funding updates

Funding opportunities, Guidance, international

UKRO logoThe UK Research Office (UKRO) is the European office of the UK Research Councils. It delivers a subscription-based advisory service for research organisations (in the main UK HEIs) and provides National Contact Point services on behalf of the UK Government. UKRO’s mission is to maximise UK engagement in EU-funded research, innovation and higher education activities. One way UKRO supports this mission is through the annual conference.

The slides are publicly available via the UKRO website. To access further subscriber-only information, including events notifications and news, BU staff members can register today!

The 2016  UKRO Annual Conference took place at Glasgow ​Caledonian University in Glasgow on Thursday 30th June and Friday 1st July 2016.​​ Please follow the links below to access slides and other information from the event:

Conference Programme​​

​Biographies of Speakers​

Presentations:

Thursday 30 June 2016

Opening plenary session

Horizon 2020: Are We On the Path to Success?​
Mr Wolfgang Burtscher (DG RTD, Deputy Director General)

European Research Council: An Update and Future Directions​
Mr Theodore Papazoglou (ERCEA, Head of Unit, Support to the ERC Scientific Council)

Parallel sessions 1

A) Horizon 2020 Health Challenge: Zika, Ebola & Antimicrobial Resistance
Ms Line Matthiessen (DG RTD, Head of Unit, Fighting Infectious Diseases and Advancing Public Health)

B) Being Ethics Ready and Compliant
Ms Maria Filipa Ferraz De Oliveira (ERCEA, Head of Ethics Sector)

C) Horizon 2020 Funding for Research into Migration and Mobility​
Ms Elisabeth Lipiatou (DG RTD, Head of Unit, Open and Inclusive Societies)

Parallel sessions 2

A) Marie Skl​odowska-Curie Actions Reporting: IT’s That Time of the Year Again…
Ms Cathy Souto Enriques (REA, MSCA Project Advisor)

B) Funding Research for a Secure Society
​Mr Graham Willmott (DG HOME, Head of Unit, Innovation and Industry Security)​

Friday 1 July 2016

Open Innovation: The Future of EU Innovation Funding? Ideas for Creating a European Innovation Council
Ms Sophie Laurie (NERC, Associate Director of Innovation and Translation)​
Mr Matthew King (DG RTD, Head of Unit Open Innovation)​​

Parallel sessions 3

A) Open to the World: Co-Funded Calls and How it Works in Practice
Mr Diego Sammaritano (DG RTD, Policy Officer, R&I Cooperation with China)

B) Open Science: Opening Up Scientific Information in Horizon 2020
Ms Joy Davidson (Collaborative Research & Services Provision Manager, University of Glasgow)

Parallel sessions 4

ELO Profiles for the Future of EU Funding
Ms Angela Noble (University of Edinburgh, Manager – Europe)
Ms Philippa Shelton (University of the West of England, Bristol, Senior Research Business Development Manager)
Ms Kimberly Cornfield (UCL, Head of EU Proposal Management)​

Managing Intellectual Property in Horizon 2020​
Mr Jakub Ramocki (EU IPR Helpdesk, Intellectual Property Advisor)

If you would like to discuss potential EU funding activity, please contact Emily Cieciura, RKEO’s Research Facilitator: EU & International. To see related articles, just search for ‘UKRO’ on the BU Research blog.

 

Need participants for your research? Check out this JISC-funded initiative

Advertise your surveys, interviews and other research studies to thousands of participants for free on Call For Participants:

Call For Participants is an online community for researchers and participants, funded by Jisc. University staff and students can use this service for free to advertise their surveys, interviews and other research studies to the public and recruit participants.

Researchers can also access other support and resources, such as webinars, guidance on communicating research to the public, ethics guidance, and case studies to support their research activities. Call For Participants is used and trusted by academic researchers from over 340 universities worldwide.

To advertise a survey, interview or other research study, visit the researcher homepage and create a study page. For resources and support for researchers visit the researcher support page, and the blog.

call for participants webpage

“Styles of Good Sense” Ethics, Filmmaking and Scholarship

PG research

Crew shooting early scene for the short, research-based film, RUFUS STONE

Crew shooting early scene for the short, research-based film, RUFUS STONE

Kip Jones’ draft Chapter for The Routledge International Handbook on Narrative and Life History was deposited today on BRIAN and Academia.edu. The book’s section on Ethics is edited by Ivor Goodson, with assistance from Ari Antikainen, Molly Andrews and Pat Sikes. Jones’ Chapter entitled, “Styles of Good Sense—Ethics, Filmmaking and Scholarship” is based upon his experience as researcher, author and producer of the award winning short film, RUFUS STONE.

Jones proposes that aesthetics and ethics need to be considered in concert and that they are at the very heart of arts-based research. Ethics and Aesthetics become intertwined and support one another. Jones states:

‘Ethics, much like aesthetics, is often misunderstood as something effusive, illusive and somehow, decision-making by the few on a rarefied echelon, involving pronouncements of grand moral impact and/or sophisticated discrimination. For these kinds of reasons and to avoid potential headaches, it is often assumed that checklists and committees will be far better at making such decisions than mere individuals.’

Jones believes that ethics and aesthetics need to remain the prerogative of the researcher/filmmaker and her/his participants and audiences. By developing a trust in instinct and intuition and the naturally expressive and moral potential of our personal resources, research involving people’s stories can become richer and more human, if we only are willing to jettison some of the baggage of the old academic rigor and dry procedural ethics.

Jones’ involvement in the section of the book on Ethics will include co-contributors Arthur Frank, Norm Denzin, Laurel Richardson and Carolyn Ellis, and will be published in the New Year.

 

 

Research Ethics: Insights from the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health and the Centre for Social Work, Sociology & Social Policy

PG research, Publishing, Research Ethics, Research Integritiy

Ethics contributions

Collage of research ethics contributions

Academics based in HSC have experience in a wide-range of research.  In the process of reflecting on all aspects of the research process several members of HSC have published about ethical issues that they have had to address in their own research.    This BU Blog highlights some of these key HCS papers which may help fellow academics and students across the globe address similar ethical questions.  HSC has a history of publishing on research ethics, Professor Emerita Immy Holloway wrote about the researcher who may have a dual role, or even conflicting role, as researcher and health care professional (1).  More recently, several midwifery researchers in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health wrote about the issues facing practitioners doing research in the field where they work, especially concerning the similarities and differences between professional ethics and research ethics (2-3).  Negotiating ethical paths cleaved by competing concerns between protecting research participants and over-managing the ethical process is tricky.

In her book Rainforest Asylum: The enduring legacy of colonial psychiatric care in Malaysia Dr. Ashencaen Crabtree in the Centre for Social Work, Sociology & Social Policy, addresses the problematic issue of gate-keepers in research together with the ethics of critical observation of abuse (potential or actual), as well as the ethics of advocating on behalf of research participants (4).

The fear that the ethical application process in the UK is becoming more and more cumbersome and bureaucratic has been widely recognised as highlighted by Prof. van Teijlingen and colleagues (5-6).

Research ethics review processes are also considered in terms of access to participants regarded as ‘vulnerable’ in a recently published paper by Dr. Ashencaen Crabtree (7) of ethnographers working in health settings who are seeking to understand the context of care and patient/service user experiences.  She concludes that paternalistic control of participation on the grounds of ethical protection of vulnerable people seriously disenfranchises potential participants in preventing them from being able to share their relevant, lived experiences as recipients of service provision.

Prof. van Teijlingen and BU Visiting Fellow Dr. Padam Simkhada highlighted that the social, cultural and economic contexts in which research is conducted often differ between developing and developed countries.  However they stress that researchers need to apply for research ethics approval to the relevant local authority, if national legislation requires one to do so (8).

A new and challenging area of research is the use of discussion boards as a source of research data.  In their paper Dr. Bond and BU colleagues discuss both practical and ethical dilemmas that arise in using such data (9). In earlier research, Prof. Parker of the Centre for Social Work, Sociology & Social Policy, highlighted some of the benefits and dangers of using email and the Internet for research as the potential for electronic media continues its rapid growth (10).

Obtaining informed consent is something that all researchers need to consider. However, in some research situations obtaining consent can be particularly challenging.  Prof. Hundley and colleagues discuss the ethical challenges involved in conducting a cluster randomised controlled trial, where consent needs to be considered at a number of levels (11).  In a second paper issues of consent during pregnancy, where there is the potential for harm to two participants, are considered (12).

In research into the implications of the Mental Capacity Act 2005 for social research, Prof. Parker explored the contested meanings and difficulties associated with informed consent in social research, highlighting some of the challenges raised by an almost unquestioned acceptance of biomedical research ethics in social research and questioning whether potential ‘harm’ is different in this context (13, 14). This research has led to further explorations of the potential for ethical covert research by Prof. Parker and Dr. Ashencaen Crabtree.

 

The way forward

There a plenty of challenges to research ethics in both the health and social care sectors.  Ethical considerations relate to technological developments such conducting research over the Internet or the analysis of tweets.  HSC staff will continue to publish on a range of moral dilemma as well as practical issues related to research ethics.  Moreover, academic from the two centres are planning a Masterclass on research ethics to be held in early 2014.

 

 

References

  1. Holloway, I., Wheeler, S. (1995) Ethical Issues in Qualitative Nursing Research, Nursing Ethics 2: 223-232.   Web address:  http://nej.sagepub.com/content/2/3/223.full.pdf+html
  2. Ryan, K., Brown, B., Wilkins, C., Taylor, A., Arnold, R., Angell, C., van Teijlingen, E. (2011) Which hat am I wearing today? Practicing midwives doing research, Evidence-Based Midwifery 9(1): 4-8.
  3. van Teijlingen, E.R., Cheyne, H.L. (2004) Ethics in midwifery research, RCM Midwives Journal 7 (5): 208-10.
  4. Ashencaen Crabtree, S. (2012) Rainforest Asylum: The enduring legacy of colonial psychiatric care in Malaysia, London: Whiting & Birch.
  5. van Teijlingen, E., Douglas, F., Torrance, N. (2008) Clinical governance and research ethics as barriers to UK low-risk population-based health research? BMC Public Health 8(396)                            Web address: www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1471-2458-8-396.pdf
  6. van Teijlingen, E. (2006) Reply to Robert Dingwall’s Plenary ‘Confronting the Anti-Democrats: The unethical Nature of Ethical Regulation in Social Science, MSo (Medical Sociology online) 1: 59-60  Web address:  www.medicalsociologyonline.org/archives/issue1/pdf/reply_rob.pdf
  7. Ashencaen Crabtree, S. (2013) Research ethics approval processes and the moral enterprise of ethnography. Ethics & Social Welfare. Advance Access: DOI:10.1080/17496535.2012.703683
  8. van Teijlingen E.R., Simkhada, P.P. (2012) Ethical approval in developing countries is not optional, Journal of Medical Ethics 38 :428-430.
  9. Bond, C.S,  Ahmed, O.H., Hind, M, Thomas, B., Hewitt-Taylor, J. (2013) The Conceptual and Practical Ethical Dilemmas of Using Health Discussion Board Posts as Research Data, Journal of Medical Internet Research 15(6):e112)  Web address: http://www.jmir.org/2013/6/e112/
  10. Parker, J.  (2008) Email, ethics and data collection in social work research: some reflections from a research project, Evidence & Policy: A Journal of Research, Debate & Practice, 4 (1): 75-83.
  11. Hundley, V, Cheyne, HC, Bland, JM, Styles, M, Barnett, CA.. (2010) So you want to conduct a cluster randomised controlled trial? Lessons from a national cluster trial of early labour, Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice 16: 632-638
  12. Helmreich, R.J., Hundley, V., Norman, A., Ighedosa, J., Chow, E. (2007) Research in pregnant women: the challenges of informed consent, Nursing for Women’s Health 11(6):  576-585.
  13. Parker, J., Penhale, B., Stanley, D., 2010. Problem or safeguard? Research ethics review in social care research and the Mental Capacity Act 2005. Social Care & Neurodisability, 1 (2): 22-32.
  14. Parker, J., Penhale, B., Stanley, D. (2011) Research ethics review: social care and social science research and the Mental Capacity Act 2005, Ethics & Social Welfare, 5(4): 380-400.

 

Vanora Hundley, Sara Ashencaen Crabtree, Jonathan Parker & Edwin van Teijlingen