Please note, student projects refer to studies that are carried out as part of a University of Manchester degree programme (i.e. Undergraduate, Master’s, PhD, etc) and are supervised by a University of Manchester member of staff. Students are not permitted to seek ethical approval through the University of Manchester for research studies that are not a part of their coursework or programme requirements. 

All studies must comply with the University of Manchester’s Research Governance policy and students must not conduct any unsupervised research. 

When determining whether your research requires formal research ethics approval, it's important to first distinguish whether you are conducting research training/coursework or research as part of your dissertation/thesis/staff project.

• Research training is an activity usually conducted as part of coursework in a taught programme in which you collect and analyse a small amount of data in order to gain experience in research methodology, the synthesising of ideas and scholarly report writing.
• Research is primary data collection or secondary data analysis intended to lead to the advancement of knowledge or understanding in a given subject area. This type of activity in a taught programme is usually reserved for the final dissertation.

When using the University's Ethics Decision Tool, please keep in mind which of these categories your project falls into as it will help you to navigate through the tool successfully.

Please also note, if conducting research training as part of your coursework there are a number of requirements and expectations in relation to how you design your work. In addition to these, your Course Director, Programme Director or Unit Lead may have additional requirements so please ensure you speak with them directly if you have any queries.

In general, activities to be conducted as part of research training must be low risk and adhere to the following criteria:

Participant groups must be limited to one or more of the following

• Adults who are able to give informed consent in a way that accords with accepted practice
• Participants in professional roles who will be interviewed about their professional practice. Interviews will be conducted in their work setting.
• Participant groups limited to peers, colleagues and family members

And all of the following additional criteria must be met

• The research will not involve vulnerable or dependent groups.
• The research will take place in public or private locations where the safety of the student can be protected and the privacy of participants can be guaranteed.
• The research will be conducted with participants inside the EU or an international setting that is not on the list of countries/regions that the Foreign and Commonwealth Office advises against 'all but essential' travel to.
• The research will not involve the collection of video/photographs of research participants.
• The research will not require research participants to provide information likely to cause them significant levels of distress.

Autoethnography

Autoethnography is an ethnographic practice where the main data that is reported and analysed is the researcher’s own experiences.

Most autoethnography is concerned with the researcher’s experiences in relation to various social interactions, or participation in various events, but a smaller subset of autoethnography is based on the experience of solitary activities (i.e. where there is no one else involved in the activity itself other than the researcher).

Prospective autoethnography

Any form of prospective autoethnography, (i.e. autoethnographic research where the researcher’s experiences are either recorded contemporaneously (e.g. in field notes) or already known by the researcher to be a future object of analysis) fall within the scope of the University’s research ethics policies and will require the appropriate level of School/division or UREC approval.

This requirement for research ethics approval includes solitary autoethnography, (i.e. autoethnographic research where it is literally true that only the researcher is involved as a participant and no one else is present at the time of the research).

If you are a member of staff or a student from a Dept/Division/School without a local ethics process and planning on exclusively conducting a solitary autoethnographic study (and are not intending to include any additional data collection measures involving other human participants), please use the updated Prop UREC route, ticking ‘Solitary autoethnography ONLY’.

If you are a student from a Dept/Division/School with a local ethics process, you should consult the criteria and guidance notes from your area in order to determine if you can apply through that route.

If you are planning on conducting other prospective autoethnographic methods or a solitary autoethnographic study that includes other methods of data collection, you should check the usual Dept/Division/School criteria (students only) or Prop UREC criteria in order to determine if the study is suitable for this route. Studies that are not eligible for Dept/Division/School review or Prop UREC review must be submitted to the full UREC.

Retrospective autoethnography

A considerable amount of autoethnographic research is based on analysis of the researchers’ previous experiences/interactions, that are only later identified by the researcher as an object for research. Such retrospective autoethnography is not subject to research ethics review if and only if there was no research project, no prospective research data collection, and no intention to perform research at the time the experiences/interactions occur.

The University does not provide retrospective research ethics approval, and any attempt to redescribe a prospective autoethnography as a retrospective research ethnography in order to avoid research ethics scrutiny will constitute research misconduct and will be dealt with accordingly.

A researcher publishing a retrospective autoethnography must still consider all relevant ethical and legal implications of the publication. 

Human Tissue

Human Tissue studies may involve the collection of new samples, including non-relevant material, from participants or the use of previously collected samples.

If you will be working with human tissues samples, please ensure you have read the Policy on Compliance with the Human Tissue Act. You must use the ethics decision tool to verify if your study requires UREC approval. If the tool indicates that UoM ethical approval is required, Prop UREC should only be applied for where no donors will be recruited or new samples collected. If you will be recruiting donors and collecting samples you will require full UREC review.

In all cases, it is a requirement that any researchers storing or using human tissue on UoM's premises register with the Research Governance, Ethics & Integrity Team. If you are storing tissue on the licensed premises of another organisation, such as one of the Trust sites, please ensure you follow any local procedures to register your samples with the relevant DI.