As part of our commitment to ensuring all research carried out at, or through, the University of Stirling meets our ethical standards, all student dissertations – both undergraduate and postgraduate taught – are considered for ethical implications. If you're a student preparing to write your dissertation, follow our Ethics Decision Tree diagram below to determine what action is required.
Next steps
After following our Ethics Decision Tree, you should take one of these actions:
- If you are still unsure about the ethical implications of your proposed research, or there appear to be no ethical implications, complete a Research Proposal Ethics Checklist. You will need your supervisor's signature and should submit your completed form by email to ethics@stir.ac.uk. Please note you should expect to receive acknowledgement of your checklist within two working days – please contact ethics@stir.ac.uk if you haven't.
- If your proposed research involves animals in any way, approval is required from the Animal Welfare and Ethical Review Body (AWERB).
- If your proposed research involves NHS patients, NHS staff or takes place in NHS sites; health/patient research taking place in health service settings in other countries OR entails invasive procedures or intrusive interventions on human participants, approval is required from the NHS, Invasive or Clinical Research (NICR) committee.
- For all other research with ethical implications, ethical review by the General University Ethics Panel (GUEP) is required.
Contact us
If you have a general question about our ethics policies and procedures, please get in touch.
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