Human ethics

USQ is committed to promoting ethical conduct of research and require all staff and students to ensure:

• experiments involving human subjects are worthwhile and likely to contribute to new knowledge
• experiments are conducted and supervised appropriately
• the rights of experimental subjects are protected.

Applications for human ethics approval are processed through the Office of Research.

Who needs to obtain approval?

Anyone (including Research Workers external to USQ) wishing to contact USQ students and / or staff for research purposes (e.g. surveys, interviews, focus groups) needs to obtain approval.

Obtaining approval at USQ:

At the earliest time possible prior to conducting the research with or about human participants, contact the responsible officer at USQ to request permission to survey staff or students for research purposes:

• Student/s within a course/s within one discipline – Head of School
• Students within one Faculty Area – Executive Dean
• Students across whole of University campus/es: Pro Vice-Chancellor (Student Services) 
• USQ staff:  Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research and Innovation)

Please include the following details in your email requesting permission, to ensure that your request can be reviewed and assessed promptly:

• Project Title
• Primary/Chief Investigator name
• Primary/Chief Investigator contact details (phone & email)
• Affiliation (Name of School, department, University, work area, or external organisation)
• Short summary (plain English) of project
• Aim of the Project
• Participant groups and the method of recruitment
• Time period when the research activities are expected to take place (e.g. Semester 2)
• Prizes/incentives (if applicable)
• Ethics approval details (if research is human research)

Human research ethical review is required when research is conduct:

•  with or about people;
• ·or their data;
• ·or tissue

 Human participation in research is therefore understood broadly to include the involvement of human beings through:

• taking part in surveys, interviews, or focus groups
• undergoing psychological, physiological, or medical testing or treatment
• being observed by researchers
• researchers having access to their personal documents or other materials
• the collection and use of their body organs, tissues, fluids, or exhaled breath
• access to their information (in any form) as part of an existing published or unpublished source or database

The University may choose to exempt from ethical review research that they deem to meet the requirements of sections 5.1.22 and 5.1.23 of the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research, 2007. 

If you are unclear on whether your project may require human research ethical review, please contact the Research Integrity and Ethics team, email human.ethics@usq.edu.au.

The Human Research Ethics Committee is established and conducted in compliance with the NHMRC National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research (2007).  The primary purpose of the National Statement is the protection of the welfare and rights of participants in research.

The Human Research Ethics Committee is responsible for:

• reviewing the ethical acceptability of human research
• advising of any ethical considerations for these proposals
• ensuring compliance with regulatory and legislative requirements relating to human research.

The general principles followed by the Human Research Ethics Committee in its deliberations are:

• informed participant consent
• voluntary participation and right of withdrawal without sanction
• confidentiality of participants and records
• secure storage of relevant data for a minimum period of five years after completion of a research project
• clear, coherent expression of research proposals, and
• regular monitoring of research outcomes.

Whilst the NHMRC National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research (2007), and Chapter 4.7: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples in particular, enables researchers to ‘meet’ rule-based requirements of ethical approval, it is also necessary that researchers engage fully with the implications of difference and values relevant to their research.

The NHRMC Values and Ethics: Guidelines for Ethical Conduct in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Research are based on the importance of trust, recognition and values. Ethical research therefore, requires not only the limiting of inappropriate behaviour, but also that researchers develop an awareness of the settings that may lead unintentionally to imprudent or untrustworthy behaviours.

Researchers who propose to work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples should ensure that they have read and addressed the above guidelines, together with the Guidelines for Ethical Research in Australian Indigenous Studies (GERAIS).

Note: If you are planning to undertake health and/or wellbeing research involving Aboriginal people in New South Wales, then you must also submit your proposal to the Aboriginal Health and Medical Research Council (AH&MRC) Ethics Committee for review prior to its commencement. 

As per the advice of the National Health and Medial Research Council (NHMRC), researchers who are not affiliated with an Australian organisation that has a Human Research Ethics Committee (HREC) can contact any registered HREC, including the University of Southern Queensland (USQ) HREC, and discuss matters with them directly.

The USQ HREC will only accept applications from non-affiliated or independent researchers provided the research:

1. is being conducted within Queensland;
2. is not a clinical trial or intervention, and
3. the researcher does not have access to a HREC within their organisation.