Ethics Approval
Formal permission from an institutional ethics committee or review board to conduct research involving human participants or sensitive data.
Ethics approval is the formal clearance a researcher must obtain before collecting data involving human participants, animals, or sensitive information. It is granted by an institutional body, often called an ethics committee or institutional review board, which reviews the proposed design, recruitment, consent procedures, data protection, and risks to participants.
The application usually requires the instruments, consent forms, and recruitment materials in near-final form, and approval must be in place before any participant contact, including pilot testing.
For a thesis, timing and documentation are the practical issues. Committees meet on fixed schedules and can require revisions, so applying early protects the project timeline. Keep the approval letter and reference number, since the methodology chapter must state that approval was obtained, and data collected without it may be unusable and can constitute research misconduct.
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