Research ethics guidance for students

Ethics approval is required before undertaking a research project that will involve interaction with people (including interaction by telephone, email, videoconference, paper or online questionnaire, or by observing material they post on social media) in order to collect their opinions and/or personal information as evidence that will be used to inform or support your argument and conclusions.

Ethics approval is not required for interaction with people whose opinions or information will not be used as evidence to inform or support your argument and conclusions. For example, it is not necessary to obtain ethics approval before asking for advice on how to design or conduct your research project from your supervisor, another member of staff in History, or another academic elsewhere.

The University’s Research Ethics Policy uses the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) definition of personal data:

‘personal data’: means any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural (living) person (“data subject”); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person.

Ethics approval is not required for research in published digital or print media (such as news reports or magazine articles) or public broadcasts, where the publication/broadcast has specifically been made available by an organisation for public consumption.

Ethics approval is not required for archival research in a publicly accessible archive or other formally constituted repository accessible to scholars (unless the archive itself requires you to obtain university ethics approval before beginning your research). Though most archival research involving the personal data of living people thus does not require ethics approval, you must still comply with any ethical and data protection requirements specified by the archive itself, and with all legal data protection responsibilities. These are set out in the University’s Research Ethics Policy Note on Archival Research.

Ethics approval is required before doing any archival research that involves accessing personal data in archival materials (for instance private family collections) that have not been deposited in other a publicly accessible archive or other formally constituted repository accessible to scholars. See the University’s Research Ethics Policy Note on Archival Research. 

Oral history interviews are the most common form of research involving human participants and/or personal data that is undertaken by students history. If you will be submitting an ethics application requesting approval to do oral history interviews, then you may also wish to consult the guidance available from the Oral History Society. 

In particular, the Oral History Society provides helpful guidance on conducting oral history legally and ethically, including preparation, first approach, during the interview, after the interview, archiving and storage, dealing with GDPR (the General Data Protection Regulation), frequently asked questions, and further reading.