Within the Faculty of Humanities, responsibility for ensuring the conduct of ethical research resides within individual departments (as per the Faculty of Humanities Guide to Research Ethics PDF, 1 280KB, 69 pp.)
All members of the DKIS academic staff participate in our Ethics Review Committee activities.
An Ethics Review Committee is convened when a student requires ethics clearance on account of a proposed research project involving human subjects. This committee consists of at least three members of staff, and includes the primary supervisor of the research.
The Ethics Review Committee for a particular research project meets on request to discuss the ethical implications of the study and view the student's research instruments in order to vet their quality and ethical integrity, before data collection can proceed. at this stage, the Ethics Committee requires the student to have completed a standard Application for Ethics Clearance form (available from the supervisor or DKIS Administrator on request), and the Committee will consider this application together with the proposed research instruments.
The committee then decides whether all ethical requirements have been met, and if this is the case, the Chair will draft a brief report stating that approval has been obtained from the Departmental Ethics Review Committee. This report is signed by all committee members. The Chair sends an ethics clearance letter to the student.
If the instruments do not meet with committee approval, they are referred back to the supervisor with suggestions for improvement.
The completed Application for Ethics Clearance form, ethics clearance letter as well as the Chairs Ethics Report are kept on file by the DKIS Administrative Officer.
Additionally, when data will be collected from the UCT community, the student is responsible for applying to the Humanities Faculty Research Ethics Committee (FREC) for further clearance (for example, UCT Human Resources (HR) or /and Department of Student Affairs (DSA).
For further information on Research Ethics in the Faculty of Humanities, please consult the following: