Frequently asked questions

The educational ethics review process is intended for low-risk educational research projects that have a theoretically framed research question. Please see our ethics process map for guidance on which route is best suited for you.

No, it is not possible to obtain retrospective ethical approval. Even if there are no apparent ethical issues and the data has been collected in an appropriate way, giving retrospective ethical approval would be unethical.

No, you do not need to submit a new application. Please email the EERP team listing your amendments with your updated documents via email. It is important to consider how the change may affect different sections of your application, please ensure that these considerations have been made before sending it to the EERP Team. Once the EERP team have confirmed your further approval of amendments, you must upload your updated documents to your existing application on Sharepoint.

To publish any research findings in the UK you need to have sought approval from an ethical body. If you are conducting a research project for external publication ethical approval will be required.

Internal evaluation that is only for internal evaluative use and intended only for an internal audience does not require ethical approval. Please note that this will not be publishable as research later.

This would depend on the details of the planned research. If you are explicitly using Imperial as a case study, analysing and/or comparing institutional data then there may be institutional ‘risk’ and you will require ethical approval from Imperial and probably each institution involved in addition to the approval from the study’s ‘host institution’. However, if you are recruiting from Imperial staff or students but these participants will be integrated with other participants and there is no intention of, say, comparing Imperial with other institutions or analysing the data by institution, then contacting EERP to inform them of the study may be enough. If you are unclear please contact us to discuss the planned study.