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Ethics
Divisional Ethics Chairs
- Prof Adam Harris
Ethics Chairs for each Department
- Dr Susan Birch (CEHP - Educational Psychology only)
- Dr Joshua Stott (CEHP)
- Prof Vincent Walsh (ICN)
- Prof Nichola Raihani (EP)
- Dr Fiona Kyle (Language & Cognition)
- Dr Alexandra Perovic (Linguistics)
- Dr Emma Holmes (SHAPS)
- Prof Nadia Berthouze (UCLIC)
When preparing your ethics application, please take care to ensure that it reads well and is free from typographical and other errors. While this might seem a bit pedantic, it is worth bearing in mind that the ethics application form is an official document that may, in exceptional circumstances, need to be produced and scrutinized by others. A useful way of thinking about this might be to imagine what might happen if the document was being scrutinized by someone with a complaint about your study: is there anything in it that seems unprofessional or a bit sloppy, or that could be used, inadvertently or otherwise, to harm your reputation, or the reputation of the department or university?
In addition to the guidance below, further guidance notes on a myriad of topics (including social media data, confidentiality limits…) can be found on the central UCL ethics site.
- Submitting an application for non-invasive research with healthy adults ('low risk' research)
- fMRI research on healthy adult participants at BUCNI
- Submitting an Amendment
- Example Information Sheets and Consent Forms
- Handling complaints or unforeseen incidents
Ensuring that research conforms to agreed ethical standards
It is imperative that all research within the Division conforms to agreed ethical standards. In the first instance, please familiarise yourself with the BPS Guide of Ethics and Conduct.
Academic staff and graduate students are strongly encouraged to undertake ethics training provided by UCL Doctoral School. This is a probationary requirement to any new faculty.
Data Protection
From May 25th, 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) supplanted the Data Protection Act. It is the commitment of UCL to ensure that every current employee and registered student complies with this regulation to ensure the confidentiality of any personal data held by UCL, in whatever medium.
Personal data is defined as: “any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person ('data subject'); an identifiable natural person is one who can be identified, directly or indirectly, in particular by reference to an identifier such as a name, an identification number, location data, an online identifier or to one or more factors specific to the physical, physiological, genetic, mental, economic, cultural or social identity of that natural person”
For general information about GDPR in PaLS and some specific guidances, visit: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/pals/intranet/gdpr. For information related to research project registration for ethics application, please read on.
Data Protection registration is required before submitting your ethics application. You need to register with the PaLS Data Protection Officer (pals.data.protection@ucl.ac.uk) AND with the UCL Data Protection Officer (for instructions see Research Registration Guidance | Data Protection - UCL – University College London). To register with the PaLS Data Protection Officer, please complete the form below and email it to pals.data.protection@ucl.ac.uk: