Ethical Research
The Ethics Approval Process
If you are thinking of doing any research of your own involving participants during your Foundation Year studies, the following information is extremely important.
All research carried out within the University of Sheffield, from Foundation Year work right up to multi-million pound research projects, must comply with rigorous ethical standards. This is to protect the University, the researcher, and above all, the people being researched.
The University has a system in place to check that any research carried out by staff or students complies with its ethical standards. Before starting any research with ‘human subjects’, you must apply for ethical approval. Research with human subjects includes interviews, online and postal questionnaires - even if anonymous. It also includes gathering information from online forums, social media etc., and observing people with or without their knowledge. It is fine to use data that is already published (e.g. government figures) but ethical approval is needed to use unpublished data about people.
If in doubt, ask - if you collect data without ethical approval, you will not be allowed to use it in any assessment. Any assessment that contains, or refers to, data collected without ethical approval will automatically fail.
If you are thinking about collecting your own data from people - this includes members of your own family, friends, colleagues, acquaintances and fellow students - , either in person, by post or online, or by any other means, please talk to your Personal Tutor first. You can also ask DLL’s Principal Ethics Contact, Olivia Harrison (o.harrison@sheffield.ac.uk). They will guide you through the process of applying for approval. This can take a few weeks so you will need to plan ahead.
It is possible to collect your own data from human participants and we don’t want to discourage it - just make sure you plan head and get ethical approval first. The approval process is here.
Student Coursework Sites
Coursework sites such as Studydrive, StuDocu and CourseHERO encourage students to share course materials such as lecture notes, essays, lab reports and exam questions.
The University does not support the use of these sites and may take disciplinary action in line with the Student Discipline Regulations.
The copyright and intellectual property of such materials is owned by the University unless otherwise stated and you should always seek permission from the copyright holder before sharing any materials. Permission should be in writing and you should keep a copy of the correspondence. If you don’t receive a reply from a copyright holder this does not mean permission is granted.
For more information on coursework sites, visit: