Chapter 2: Promoting Ethical Research: Identifying the Gap in Research Ethics Application Processes

This chapter discusses how some researchers will avoid studies that require ethical approval due to the lengthy and painstaking process. By doing so, the researcher may exclude imperative new findings and data which may subsequently affect further knowledge and education in a certain subject. Through exploring alternative approaches to applying for ethical approval, the authors can explore how to make ethics applications less daunting for researchers. The authors can also look at creating more straightforward ways to undertake research that requires ethical approval such as working with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) children. This can be done by undertaking a preliminary scoping exercise to highlight the researcher’s voice and their experience of completing the ethics approval process. Investigating the specific battles that researchers have with ethical approval may result in a toolkit being created to assist researchers throughout each section of the ethics approval process. Assisting researchers in ethics application and approval processes may encourage new findings and data being discovered in various subjects and research topics. A scoping exercise has been completed to determine if there are any current measures in place to assist researchers throughout the ethics application process. The results of this have provided some suggestions for an ethics toolkit and how this can be adapted to other universities.