Research Ethics & Ethical Review
The Office of Research Ethics provides guidance on what research and scholarship requires an ethical review and facilitates the ethical review process.
When research involves humans, an ethical review is usually required. More specifically, an ethical review must be conducted where an activity or research involves the following:
- Information collected from living humans through interaction (such as interviews, questionnaires, surveys, and focus groups) or through intervention (the participant is affected in some way by being placed in a situation to be studied);
- Secondary non-public sources that identify an individual.
- Human remains, cadavers, human organs, tissues, and biological fluids, from individually identified participants, embryos or foetuses;
- Naturalistic observation that is used to study participants’ behaviour in a natural environment.
At RRU, for certain class assignments and for most research being conducted by students and faculty alike, an ethical review is mandatory.
Please review planned course activities with your program head to ensure that the necessary ethical review(s) are in place.
Policies
Please familiarize yourself with RRU's Research Ethics Policy.
Research projects that use RRU as the site of study have special requirements. Please see Research Projects Using Royal Roads University.
Tri-Council Course on Research Ethics
In preparation for supervision and teaching work, you may need to complete the self-paced Tri-Council Course on Research Ethics (CORE). If you have previously completed the course, you may want to revisit the course for a refresher. Please submit the completion certificate to your program office.
Academic Integrity
All students begin their course of study with an Introduction to Academic Integrity.
Further resources that support student academic integrity include:
Contact
The Office of Research Ethics can be reached at ethicalreview@royalroads.ca; 250.391.2600 ext. 4425.