Research Ethics News, January 2011
As most members of the Kwantlen community are aware, all research by Kwantlen faculty members, staff and students that involves human subjects/participants must receive prior approval of the Kwantlen Research Ethics Board (REB). The same is the case for research by others undertaken on the Kwantlen campuses. Kwantlen policy G-27 "Research Involving Human Participants" applies to all such research. It is available on the Kwantlen REB website: http://www.kwantlen.bc.ca/research/ethics_board.html
There have been some developments in Kwantlen's Research Ethics Office that will be of interest to faculty members and others at Kwantlen who are performing research involving human participants.
- New procedures have been implemented for delegated review of research projects that pose no more than minimal risk to participants and they are significantly reducing the time required for consideration.
- New, streamlined procedures of new minimal risk projects that have been approved by the REB at another institution. This will benefit Kwantlen personnel who are pursuing graduate studies and research elsewhere. It will also assist researchers from other institutions who wish to perform research at Kwantlen. Revised forms for such applications are available on the Kwantlen REB website (see above).
- New procedures are in place for reviewing revisions to previously approved research protocols. Prior to implementation of changes, the principal investigator should submit the following to the REB office:
- A cover memorandum/email summarizing the changes and a brief rationale for them, and
- The originally approved application, with the changes clearly tracked using the track-changes function of the word-processing program.
Other news of interest to researchers is the long-awaited release of the second edition of the Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans. The TCPS is the joint research ethics policy statement of the three federal research agencies. Kwantlen is signatory to a Memorandum of Understanding with the three agencies that requires adherence in policy and practice with the TCPS. The second edition of the TCPS contains some very significant improvements over the first edition, in terms of both clarity and comprehensiveness. It may be found at http://pre.ethics.gc.ca/eng/policy-politique/initiatives/tcps2-eptc2/Default/ Kwantlen policy G-27 will be revised to ensure continued adherence to the TCPS.
