User:Kellie Toohey/Ethics Approval - NEAF

All research involving human participants conducted at University of Canberra must be conducted in accordance with the National Health and Medical Research Council's (NHMRC) National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Research Involving Humans and will require approval from the Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC) University of Canberra [http://www.canberra.edu.au/ucresearch/ethics/human-ethics-manual/section-10. Ethics Manual] provides an overview and information on the eithics approval process in relation to human studies.

Using the NEAF I have devloped an ethics application for the University of Canberra Ethics Committee for the pilot study. This took a number of drafts and involved input from my supervisors to ensure it was correct. From this I learnt that in future I will write the application and read over it over the next few days before sending it to anyone to proof read.

The second application was developed for the ACT Health Ethics committee also using the NEAF. Each step of the process of the PhD will involve additions to the initial ethics application. The NEAF was an easy website to navigate and was very detailed, I found this to be a good learning journey as it set out clearly the information that was required.

The first ethics application for the project was submitted on the 11th September 2013. The ethics proposal was approved pending that we change the participant information form and make it smaller, this was a good outcome for the pilot study, which will now be carried out in early 2014.