If your dissertation involves people, their data or an organisation's records, you will usually need ethical approval before you collect anything. Approval comes from an ethics committee in your school, faculty or university, and the form asks what you will do, with whom, how you will get consent and how you will store the data. Apply early: approval is not given after the fact.
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A fictional example of a commentYour conclusion says the measure works, but your interviews mainly show how staff experience it. Could you limit the conclusion to what your data can show?
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Try the free previewWork based only on published literature or on anonymous, publicly available data may need a lighter review or none at all. Your programme decides which applies, so ask your supervisor before you assume your project is exempt.
Ethics review takes time. Committees meet on a schedule, forms come back with questions, and a gatekeeper may need its own approval as well. Put the application into your plan as a separate step, before data collection, with time for one round of revisions. Our final year project timeline shows where it sits.
Approval is not retrospective. Data collected before approval usually cannot be used, and changing your method after approval usually means telling the committee. If your design changes, check with your supervisor whether you need an amendment.
Each university and college sets its own procedure, often per school or faculty, with its own forms and committees. Look in your module or programme handbook and on your school's research ethics page, and ask your supervisor which committee reviews student projects. Our pages per institution, such as UL and TU Dublin, summarise what those handbooks say about ethics.
Your dissertation should say that you obtained approval, from which committee, and how you handled consent, confidentiality and data storage. Examiners read that section to check that what you did matches what you were approved to do. If you anonymised interviews, describe how; our page on anonymising your dissertation covers the practical side.
Esmond does not review ethics applications and does not judge whether your project needs approval: your supervisor and committee decide that. Once you have a draft, Esmond reads your methodology and points out where your account of participants, consent or data handling is unclear or does not match your findings.
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If it involves people, their personal data or an organisation's records, it usually does. Literature-based work may not. Your programme decides, so ask your supervisor before you assume an exemption.
Usually not. Approval is given before data collection, and data gathered without it often cannot be used. Apply early and plan time for revisions.
Typically your design, your participants and how you recruit them, consent and information sheets, data storage and deletion, anonymisation, and risks with how you reduce them. Use your own school's form.
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