Ethics Approval for conducting our research

As our website, is still at the design stage, we need to do some research in questioning people about what the general public think about the concepts of our website. In order to find out more and evaluate our idea we have decided to conduct a survey.

As a result we are obliged to get an Ethics approval before conducting any sort of research. The application for the Ethics approval was done through the ERGO website. The application was divided in three parts. First step was the completion of IRGA form which was responsible for insurance purposes. Then, the submission of the application form and supporting documents was required. This step included multiple files:

• The Ethics form which required a full and detailed description of the project, the procedure followed when giving out the questionnaires to people, the targeted people and the purpose of the research.
• The Information Sheet, that included a brief description of the project and the purpose of the research, as well as contacting information for answering any queries raised for this research. The Information sheet was handed to the participants before signing the consent form and completing the questionnaire.
• The Consent Form, with all the points that the participant should agree with when signing the form; in order to be given the questionnaire for completion.
• The Questionnaire that was handed to people for our research.

All these files where completed, and answered carefully before submitting the form to the supervisor and therefore to the ethics committee.

The project request for approval was denied twice, due the non-up to date version of the file submitted, as there were many versions available on the site for completion. After finally submitting the latest version of the form, the Ergo committee granted us the Ethics approval for conducting our research and retrieving the required data for our project. The whole affair was quite time consuming and not overwhelmingly simple but necessary in any sort of research endeavour.

Files are available here: consent form_beSeated, Participant Information_beSeated,  EthicsForm_beseated,  questionaire