Many researchers create presentations, performances, artworks, or shows as part of their projects. These often involve fellow students, family, or friends in support roles, such as actors, models, or technical assistants. Whether ethics approval is required depends on whether these individuals are considered participants in the research. This determination needs to be made on a case-by-case basis, considering their specific roles in the project.
A good approach is that if the involvement of these individuals contributes to the research data, they are likely participants, and an ethics application is required.
Most applications received by AUTEC are provisionally approved, subject to conditions being met (conditions are often asking for more information). As stated in the letter you receive, you may not begin work with any potential participants until you have made the requested changes and received full approval in writing.
Your response needs to be in writing. The best approach is to provide the AUTEC Secretariat with:
If you disagree with a point raised by AUTEC, please propose an alternative approach or further justify your initial submission.
Once the AUTEC Secretariat receives your response, they will obtain the necessary delegated approvals and confirm the final approval of your application in writing. Please note that this process may take up to a week.
If you do not respond to the conditions within six months, your application will be closed. You will then be required to submit a new application if you wish to proceed with the research.
Currently there are two review pathways for research ethics at AUT.
The first pathway is for higher risk studies. These are almost always reviewed by the full Committee at one of their scheduled meetings.
The second is for lower risk studies. Under the minimal risk pathway, lower risk studies may be reviewed under delegated authority by sub-committee between scheduled full AUTEC meetings.
All timeframes are dependent on various factors, and based on some key assumptions:
We recommend that when you are starting to think about your research that you consult with one of our Research Ethics Senior Consultants to streamline your applications.
For full review:
For the minimal risk delegated review pathway:
Often applications require some changes based on the review. The research ethics team can assist with this process and understanding the conditions.
Your response needs to be in writing. The best approach is to provide the AUTEC Secretariat with:
If you disagree with a point raised by AUTEC, please propose an alternative approach or further justify your initial submission. Further review takes approximately one working week before full approval is granted. After you receive full approval, you may begin your research.
Occasionally, AUTEC may defer approving your ethics application. The decision letter from the Committee may highlight an ethical standard that has not been met or will outline specific features of the research that need further development or exploration. It will also indicate the name of the AUTEC or research ethics team member who is available to discuss your application prior to a resubmission.
Once you have addressed the points, submit a revised application form along with all relevant documentation by email to the AUTEC Secretariat. You may or may not want to submit a cover letter that responds to the points made by AUTEC. Resubmitted deferred applications are treated as new applications and go to a full AUTEC meeting for review. Your resubmission will be assigned to the next agenda, so please keep the agenda close dates in mind when planning your timeframes.
If English is a second language for some of your participants, it is crucial to ensure they understand your research so they can give informed consent (as described in the National Ethics Advisory Committee Standards, chapter 7 ). We recommend translating your participant documentation into a language that participants have high written competence in, such as their first language. The translation costs are met by the researchers. Any translated documents should be included in your submission to AUTEC.
Several agencies specialise in translation services. Some recommended agencies are:
Submit your application by email to ethics@aut.ac.nz.
Prepare a single PDF file with the application document at the beginning, followed by all other supporting documents in the order stated in the application. Please make sure your application contains all required signatures from appropriate people in your faculty. It can be helpful to let the people know in advance that you will be asking for their signature.
Context is key.
AUTEC will consider applications where researchers use health records under certain circumstances (i.e. secondary use of health data), but these must comply with the Health Information Privacy Code and other relevant guidelines or policies.
The Health Information Privacy Code states that identifiable health information can be disclosed to a researcher under specific conditions:
Directly related purposes could include an audit of service provision or other quality improvement measures. If the data was collected as part of previous research, any purpose explicitly outlined in the research methodology would apply.
Where researchers are provided de-identified data from another organisation, AUTEC request documentation describing how the de-identification of data was done and who the person responsible for this was. In this case, a person within the organisation who has stewardship of the data must de-identify the data before providing it to the researcher. The researcher cannot perform the de-identification.
A wavier of consent for use of secondary data may be granted by an ethics committee where it is sufficiently justified. Typically, this would be done in circumstances where there may be practical issues with gaining consent, such as in cases where the data set is very large, considered minimal risk or is historic.
The National Ethical Advisory Committee (NEAC) provides guidance for the use of patient data for purposes outside what it was originally collected for. This is referred to as secondary use of Health Data and has its own ethical considerations and level of risk. For more information, please read Chapter 12 of the NEAC standards, particularly from paragraph 12.28.
If in doubt, please make an appointment with a Research Ethics Senior Consultant .
Patient contact details are identifiable and cannot be disclosed except under specific circumstances. When recruiting patients, it is appropriate for someone independent of the research team to provide information about the study in their clinical capacity. They may then either seek the patient's consent to share their contact information with the researchers or provide the patient with an email or other contact method for the research team. Refer to "Am I able to use health records for my research" for further details.
There are two main aspects to disseminating the findings of your research, and information about each is required in different parts of the application form.
Direct advertising to potential research participants should be regarded as the start of the informed and voluntary consent process as well as the start of the selection of participants. Include the final version of the advertisement in your application.
The advertisement should:
The role of peer review is to provide an assessment of the research adequacy of a study. There are three key aspects to this:
AUTEC provides a template that may be used as evidence of independent peer review. This template seeks to ensure that:
In some cases, it may be relevant to use the HDEC template for peer review (especially if applying to HDEC committees), and in that case you should use the HDEC scientific peer review template.
No. Within the survey instructions or Information Sheet include a statement such as: 'By submitting this survey, you are indicating your consent to participate in this research'.
In Aotearoa | New Zealand it is an ethical requirement that individuals invited to do research give informed and voluntary consent. Evidence of this must be obtained by the researchers and kept in the form of a Consent Form.
Adequate evidence of consent needs to include adequate evidence of identity.
For example:
Person A agreed to participate on date dd/mm/yyyy.
The researcher needs to keep the Consent Form for at least six years, in case verification is required for some reason. Information Sheets and Consent Forms need to have been approved by AUTEC before they are used.
In some cases, consent may be indicated through accessing or answering a survey, or questionnaire. Other cases may exist where there is no written consent collected. In these cases, AUTEC considers it sufficient to use a statement like the following at the start of the activity or in the information sheet:
'Completion of this questionnaire (or survey) will be taken as indicating your consent to participate in the research'
In some cases, it may be appropriate for an oral consent protocol to be used. This would only typically be used in cases where interviews are the main format that the research takes, and this should only be in cases where written consent is not practicable or appropriate.
The Oral Consent Protocol in the Consent Form exemplar is a good model to use in these cases and is not required where written consent is possible.
There may be cases where other forms of evidencing consent may be suitable, but these must be detailed/justified adequately for AUTEC to assess on a case-by-case basis.
In cases where organisational or group levels of consent are required, it is a legal requirement to include individual consents as well.
Assent: An indication of interest used for individuals under the age of 16 years to indicate they would like to participate in research. Importantly, young people can assent, but consent from parents or guardians must also be obtained. Adults do not assent.
Consent: In Aotearoa New Zealand, consent is a legal agreement. In the context of research, consent is the agreement to participate in the study. Adults give consent on their own behalf or on behalf of their children or those they have legal guardianship over. For more information about consent and research in cases where participants may have diminished capacity to consent, please refer to the Code of Health and Disability Services Consumers' Rights, Right 7.
There are a number of factors that you need to take into consideration when deciding whether to provide counselling opportunities for participants. These include, though are not limited to:
When considering these issues, it is important to neither overstate nor dismiss any potential risk. Responsible researching involves providing reasonable care for your participants.
If you do decide that it would be prudent to provide counselling opportunities, then the next issue is to decide which health providers you will use. It is important that any opportunities you provide will not require any payment from the participant. When counselling is required as a consequence of your research, then you need to ensure that your participants do not pay for the consultations. For adult participants in the Auckland region, the usual counselling provider that you should offer is AUT Student Counselling and Mental Health.
AUT Student Counselling and Mental Health can provide up to three free sessions of counselling for research participants, where the researcher is an AUT student or staff member and has AUTEC approval. These sessions are only available for issues that have arisen directly as a result of their participation in the research, and are not for other general counselling needs. If your participant is an AUT student, then they are entitled to access AUT Student Counselling and Mental Health free of charge and may not be limited to three counselling sessions. When offering the use of AUT Student Counselling and Mental Health, there is an agreed wording that you will need to include in your Information Sheet. You will find this in the Information Sheet exemplar.
Should a participant wish to use the counselling sessions, they will need to identify you and the research project they have been involved in when they make their appointment. The counselling is face-to-face onsite in the AUT Student Counselling & Mental Health Centres or online via a video call. This counselling provision cannot accommodate crisis work, so in that situation the participant would need to access their own health provider or Community Mental Health Services as soon as possible.
If your participants are adults outside the Auckland region, then you will need to locate an appropriate local or online service close to them and make any necessary arrangements with those services. Many researchers provide the contact numbers for free publicly available telephone services such as Lifeline, Youthline, Outline et cetera. There may also be services linked to the area of your research, e.g. Depression Helpline, Chinese Lifeline, Wellington Samaritans, Problem Gambling, and many others.
Counselling services for children are not available at AUT. If you are conducting your research within a school community, then you may be able to access the local school counsellor. Please note that this option may not be appropriate if the school counsellor is involved in or is the focus of the research. There are also telephone services such as Kidsline and Youthline.
These are some suggestions. It is up to you to find a suitable free service that is appropriate for your research and to provide your participants and AUTEC with advice about how the services you have chosen may be accessed if they are needed.
All use of animals in teaching or research is governed by the Animal Welfare Act 1999 and requires approval from an Animal Ethics Committee authorised by the Minister of Agriculture, in accordance with an approved Code of Conduct. Codes of conduct are approved and monitored by the Minister of Agriculture through the National Animal Ethics Advisory Committee.
AUT has a Memorandum of Understanding with The University of Auckland which allows AUT academic staff or students who need to apply for ethics approval for animal research and learning to apply to The University of Auckland Animal Ethics Committee (UAAEC). It also allows for AUT academic staff or students to apply for approval of standard operating procedures for an animal research facility. Please note that the approval of standard operating procedures does not constitute AUT organisational approval to operate an animal research facility.
AUT researchers and academic staff wishing to use animals should contact the Secretary of the UAAEC. Please refer to the flow chart detailing the process for application to the UAAEC.
The coversheet supplied by the UAAEC will need to be signed off by your Head of Department, the Associate Dean (Research) and the Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research) at AUT and then submitted to the Research Ethics Lead along with the application and an internal charge docket (ICD).
AUT researchers and academic staff will need to be able to meet the fees for application and monitoring from their own research or teaching budgets.
Information about animal welfare and the animal ethics process can be accessed on theUniversity of Auckland’s Animal Ethics pages.