(Episode 125) Beyond the hurdle: The hidden work of ethics reviewers
In this episode, host Dr Emily Goodall welcomes Professor Judith Hanks, Professor of Applied Linguistics in the School of Education at the University of Leeds and Chair of the cross-faculty research ethics committee. They delved into the essential, yet often overlooked, role of research ethics review in shaping positive culture.
🔑 Key Takeaways:
🧱 Ethics as integral to research Culture, not just a hurdle: Many researchers approach the ethics review process with the expectation of quick approvals, often perceiving reviewers’ queries as obstacles. However, ethics should not be seen as a bureaucratic hurdle, but rather as a foundational and constructive part of research—something to be embedded from the very beginning.
⚖️ Benefits and challenges of ethical review: Engaging in ethical review can be intellectually rewarding. It invites critical reflection on research design and impact. At the same time, it presents challenges, such as time constraints and the need to navigate complex, sometimes ambiguous, ethical dilemmas.
🤝 Building a positive research culture through conversation, recognition, and community: A positive research culture is strengthened through open, ongoing conversations about ethics, supported by interdisciplinary communities and formal recognition of ethical engagement. Framing ethics training as an inclusive dialogue—rather than a compliance exercise—encourages meaningful participation from researchers at all career stages.
Judith encourages listeners to explore the websites of their research institutions and relevant learned societies, which offer valuable resources such as ethical guidelines, codes of practice, and principles to support ethical research. She also recommends reaching out to local ethics committee members for advice and to ask about opportunities to get involved in the ethics review process yourself, as it can be a rewarding and enriching experience.
🔍 Resources mentioned in this episode:
- British Educational Research Association (BERA) – The organization offers materials and guidelines focused on research ethics within educational research.
- British Association of Applied Linguists (BAAL) – Provides resources and principles related to ethical considerations in applied linguistics research.
- British Psychological Association (BPS) – Their website includes codes of practice and resources directly addressing research ethics.
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Transcript
Welcome to the Research Culture Uncovered podcast where in every episode we explore what is research culture and what should it be. You'll hear thoughts and opinions from a range of contributors to help you change research culture into what you want it to be.
Emily Goodall [:Hello and welcome to Research Culture Uncovered. I'm Emily Goodall, a researcher developer from the University of Leeds. My episodes focus on research integrity, ethics and responsible research practices. I'm delighted to be joined by Professor Judith Hanks, who is a leading expert in applied linguistics, exploratory practice and co production. Judith is also the chair of our cross faculty Research Ethics Committee. Today I'm looking forward to shining a spotlight on the important role of ethics review in supporting a positive research culture. Judith, welcome to the podcast.
Judith Hanks [:Hi Emily, thanks very much for having me.
Emily Goodall [:So I always like to start an episode by finding out a little bit more about our guests. So can you tell us a little bit more about yourself and your research?
Judith Hanks [:Okay, so I'm the chair, as you said, of the Faculty Research Ethics Committee for the faculties of Business environment, Social sciences, plus scholarship and pedagogic research. My research, my own research is based very much in education and applied linguistics. So looking at practitioner research, co production, so thinking about teachers and learners as co researchers investigating their own teaching and learning practices, and that's most often known as exploratory practice. So it's part of the family of practitioner research sits alongside action research and reflective practice, to name just a couple.
Emily Goodall [:There's quite a diverse research area. Do you think that helps when you're on such a diverse ethics committee?
Judith Hanks [:Yeah, I think it probably does because I have insights into different research practices that happen in very different parts of the world. So the work I do, I've done work in China, I've done work in Brazil, done work in Finland. So I can see different ways of doing different types of research and what are the demands and what are the challenges of doing those different kinds of research? So I think that's really, really helpful when reviewing and overseeing others, reviewing applications for ethical review.
Emily Goodall [:How did you get started into being an ethical reviewer and that role as.
Judith Hanks [:The chair, so started a long time ago actually when I was doing my PhD and I noticed at that time, I'm glad to say the university has changed quite a lot since then. But at that time ethics was very skewed towards a kind of rigid, I would say a clinical model which didn't allow for inclusive practitioner research or co produced research practices. So it was all about anonymizing, it was all about reproducibility and so on and so on. And that just didn't really match the kind of work that I was involved in and the kind of work that I knew many others were involved in. So I thought, okay, I could sit around and complain about this or I could actually join the committee and have these voices represented by. I'm glad to say that I think the university has moved a long way since then. I think it's a much more inclusive and nuanced approach, which I think is appropriate for accommodating very different types of research, very innovative types of research as well.
Emily Goodall [:What are the main benefits and challenges to doing those ethical reviews? Because obviously not many people actually get involved in ethical review. So I'm really interested to see what it's like from your perspective.
Judith Hanks [:I think one of the things is that ethics are endlessly fascinating. I think it's rare that you have a simple black or white yes or no answer. Obviously, if there's any kind of possibility of harm involved, then that would be a very big red flag. But most of the work, most of the applications that we see are people doing really interesting work or wanting to do really interesting research, finding out about all sorts of different things. The ethical issues, they're very often dilemmas and often it's a question of thinking through consequences. So if I do X, what will the consequences be? Am I taking care to look after the interests of my participants? For example, if I do Y, what will the consequences of that be? So it's not a hard and fast, you must do it this way, you must not do it that way. It's more about presenting justifications for why you want to do a certain thing or a certain number of things in a particular way, and sort of thinking, as I say, about the consequences of if I do this, what might the consequences be? And often those consequences can be both positive and negative. So it's a question of weighing up.
Judith Hanks [:Hopefully the balance is on the positive side. We don't want the balance to be on the negative side.
Emily Goodall [:What do you think are the main sort of challenges when you're doing an ethical review? What do you find most difficult?
Judith Hanks [:That's a tricky question to answer because obviously I'm not going to refer to any particular application in detail now, but I'd say one of the most common challenges is the time pressure. Obviously, everybody is under time constraints, including the applicants. The applicants are often having to turn around an application really quickly because the funder has a short lead in time. So we do our best to turn around the reviews as quickly as possible. But at the same time, we have to be thorough, we have to be careful. We can't just skim read it and say, tick, tick, tick. Yes, yes, yes. We need to be actually considering carefully.
Judith Hanks [:Well, has this person really thought deeply about what they're doing? So another challenge, a sort of a typical challenge, and this comes up again and again, is when people put in their application for ethical review before the project is really ready. So they're still kind of working out what are they going to do. And that means that the application itself is incomplete, so we can't give blanket approval without knowing what the project is actually going to do. So I'd say those are the main challenges are sort of how do you hit that sweet spot of taking the time to fill in the application as fully as they possibly can, being at the right moment in their application journey, as it were, and then making sure that it's complete and then to review that as quickly as it, as it's possible to do.
Emily Goodall [:There can be a bit of frustration with the ethics process. I think that's, that's, that's fair to say. But what do you think the common misconceptions that researchers have about ethical review?
Judith Hanks [:Well, the biggest one is that ethics is some kind of a hurdle that has to be overcome. Whereas I would like to turn that around and, and actually say good research is ethical. Research ethics in a good project has been built in from the start. And I'm quite convinced that most of our colleagues are being ethical from the beginning. But what maybe they're not doing is bringing that out and bringing that to the foreground. One of the misconceptions, as I say, is that it's a hurdle. One of the misconceptions is that it'll be quick. The reviewers on the committee are given a very small amount of workload time.
Judith Hanks [:On my committee, they have approximately 5% of their entire workload for the whole year. Some people have a little more, some people have a little less. On some of the other committees, people don't even have a workload at all. So they're trying to fit it in in amongst all of their other duties. I think one of the things that people need to. Applicants need to really think about is consider your colleagues, make the job as easy for them as possible. The reviewers and the committee are there to support, not to kind of block or slow down the process in any way. We do work as quickly as we possibly can, but it does usually take about six weeks from the person applying putting in the application to the review being completed.
Judith Hanks [:And that's just the first round of review. Normally there are questions. Now, I saw one just the other day that was really beautifully done. It was very, very complete. The person had considered all the different options and had really done it well. We turned it around in 11 days, but that's very unusual. And it was because the application was as complete as it could be. Normally, it'll take a bit longer, as I say, between four and six weeks for both reviewers to read and comment on the review.
Judith Hanks [:And normally there are questions, there might be something missing, there might be some kind of element of the project that is not clear. So the reviewers are asking questions and I think often applicants who are, to be fair, who are under time pressures themselves, they do feel frustrated, as you say, they sort of. Why are you asking me all these questions? The reason is we need to protect the interests of the participants, we need to protect the researchers and we need to protect the institution. So these three kind of elements guide the questions that are being asked. If something is not clear, then there needs to be a clarification. Those are two common misconceptions. One is that it's going to be quick. Usually it isn't.
Judith Hanks [:And one is that it's a hurdle, not a benefit. And as I say, I'd really like to turn that around and say, no, no, it's there to be beneficial. It should be a helpful process because hopefully the questions that are being asked, those are questions that somebody else might ask as well, somebody from outside the project or one of the participants might ask. So if the applicant is prepared, if the principal investigator and the team are prepared, then it's all to the good.
Emily Goodall [:And kind of bringing it back into a theme of research culture. How do you think a positive research culture could help kind of address these misconceptions and the feeling that it's a barrier?
Judith Hanks [:I think one of the things that a positive research culture can do is, as I said before, is to ensure that ethics is part of the conversation. Conversation from the very beginning. One of the things that I've been trying to do over the last year or so and will be doing in the coming year, is to get the school and departmental ethics reviewers and the PGR representatives on my committee to engage much more with colleagues in their schools, departments and institutions. So rather than waiting until a problem arises, actually to proactively go out and talk to people and say, look, these are some of the ethical conundrums and dilemmas that we see. Can we discuss together what steps might be taken what responses might be appropriate? What different ways might we deal with these things? And when I say we, I mean both reviewers and I mean applicants as well. So researchers, all kind of researchers, that we actually bring ethics into the conversation from the start.
Emily Goodall [:Yeah, I agree, and I think there's an element of training there as well. And I know that lots of people are resistant to the training because they think they know it all, but what are your thoughts on that?
Judith Hanks [:It's a tricky one. Again, you're asking me really tricky questions this morning. Maybe one of the things is calling it training. I think people are resistant. People often think, well, I'm a very experienced researcher, I've been doing this for years. Why do I need training? So maybe, as I say, to think of it more in terms of conversations and to think of it more in terms of, well, we can all do with updating, we can all do with being open to new experiences or new ways of doing or thinking. And of course, legislation and rules and regulations are changing all the time as well, so it's actually worthwhile to spend that bit of time. I'm actually going to be doing your online training later this week myself, just because I think it actually is quite helpful to spend a bit of time thinking about these things.
Judith Hanks [:Again, it comes back to this idea that I think everybody in the university is an ethical person, that they would want to do ethical research. Why wouldn't you? But often it's a question of having the language to explain and being open to exploring, you know, what are the ethical conundrums. It isn't a simplistic approach. It is a complex and, as I said before, nuanced and very, very interesting way of thinking about research. So I would hope to that people actually engage with ethics in their research and think about and raise questions about what might be the risks, what might be the benefits, what might be the challenges in whatever research project they're doing.
Emily Goodall [:I think there is a huge amount of crossover here with the responsible research and innovation agenda. And of course, that's now been brought into Ukraine Research innovation grant applications. You now have to think about the ethics and the responsible research aspects of your research. I think that's a nice positive step forward. I know it can be quite tricky when you're writing those statements. You only get 500 words in that grant application. But I think that's a nice positive step forward as well.
Judith Hanks [:Yeah. And I think, you know, the more that people engage with it, the more that we think about it, the more we have that language readily available. It's never going to be easy to write 500 words in an application form. You know, I've done it myself. It's not easy. Having already thought about these things and discussed them means that those things are much more accessible for the person writing. I think it's actually quite helpful.
Emily Goodall [:Yeah, I completely agree and certainly when I do responsible research innovation training, there's a lot of discussion, because I think having that discussion across different disciplines with different colleagues and people at different career stages is really helpful. Ethics reviewing is an essential part of our research culture and the research process, but it feels like it's a little bit hidden or taken for granted. What are your thoughts on how institutions and perhaps individuals could better recognise and reward the contribution that ethical reviewers make?
Judith Hanks [:That's a really good question. Yeah, you're absolutely right. I think it is often hidden. I think the fact that some people are doing it with no workload at all, some people are doing it with a very small workload, actually, that needs to be looked at to start with. If we are convinced about our ethics being part of our ethical research and our research culture, then we need to dedicate time to. Is part, I believe, of the promotions process, so that there is potential to flag up work as an ethical reviewer in the promotions process. But, you know, how many times in your career are you going to apply for promotion? Not that often. So actually, maybe what we need in addition to time, some other kind of recognition.
Judith Hanks [:I mean, there are things like the prize, there are things like in the student education world, awards for engaging with students, engaging in curriculum redefined, for example, maybe we should be thinking about having research culture awards in which ethics and engagement with ethics and ethical review is one strand that might be a possibility. But I think the key really is recognizing it, giving people appropriate time to do it, ensuring that there is clear handover when one person steps down, that another person is primed, ready to step into that person's shoes. When I took over AS chair in 2022, I was rather horrified to find that two people left the committee. I mean, not in a dreadful way, it's just that they had come to the end of their time in that role and their heads of school had asked them to take on a different role. That's perfectly normal, perfectly reasonable. However, no one had thought, oh, I'm going to say Peter for the is not a real name, but Peter is. Is stepping down. So who's going to step into Peter's shoes? What that meant was that there was a gap and it meant that there was no one to review with any kind of expertise in that area, the applications that were coming in.
Judith Hanks [:Maybe one of the things that would be really helpful, and some heads of school do this as a matter of course, but others maybe less so that people actually think as part of the planning for the coming year, when we're thinking about timetabling in the same way that we think, who's going to teach this class, who's going to teach this module, who's going to lead this module or program, who's going to be the ethics reviewer within the school? I think that would really help. Another thing that I think would be really useful and that's something that we're going to be talking about in my school, in the School of Education is having a sort of community of practice. So a group of people who are interested in ethics meeting together to talk about ethics and to bring it forward in discussions within the school. So not a. Not a formal intimidating kind of thing, but more of an informal, like a cafe scientifique, a cafe ethique etique, if you will. You know, people are interested in ethics and people have things to say and people have expertise to bring so that these things can be discussed together. That's something that we're going to be innovating in the School of Education this coming year.
Emily Goodall [:I really love that idea. I do wonder whether it could get expanded because it's that interdisciplinary conversation I think is where the ethics conversations get really tasty.
Judith Hanks [:Yes, yes, absolutely. So, I mean, I come from. I started in, was called School of Modern Languages and Cultures in those days. So I have insights from ahc, so Arts, Humanities and Cultures, and also where I sit now in the School of Education, so Social Sciences alongside that environment and business. So, you know, you, you get these conversations and you can see in these different faculties, these different schools, there are actually a lot of commonalities and of course scholarship, which I'm happy to see is now being called pedagogic research, because I think it is. It is not the poor relation of research, it is research. It's an educational research. It's a form of professional and educational research, but it is definitely research.
Judith Hanks [:So seeing all of these things, I think means that we can have a really positive and vibrant and healthy set of conversations.
Emily Goodall [:I wanted to finish today on a really positive note and I wanted to pick up on a couple of things that you've said as we've gone along. If there are listeners out there who are perhaps early career researchers or maybe even PhD students who are interested in Ethical review. What advice would you give them and what do you think the benefits to them would be?
Judith Hanks [:On a practical level, it is really worth completing that form to the best of your ability. So not just cutting and pasting from the methodology section of your draft thesis and putting it in, but actually thinking, what do the reviewers need to know? One of the things that typically slows down a review is when things are missing from the application. So participant information sheet. Either there is no participant information sheet, or there are two or three or four different groups of participants who all need slightly different bits of information. So there needs to be a participant information sheet for each group, drafts of interview questions, focus group prompts or questionnaires or surveys. The reviewers do not want to interfere in the methodology. We have no kind of say, and rightly so, we're not trying to change or interfere in methodology or research methods being used, but we will ask questions and sometimes those questions will be quite difficult. So we need to see what questions are going to be asked before approval can be issued.
Judith Hanks [:So a draft of the questions, that would be a good starting point and ensuring that you talk to people about the research that you're going to do. So sort of thinking about, well, how will the participants be recruited, how will data be managed or protected or stored? All of these things, I think for an early career researcher or a pgr, are things that are worth thinking about and getting involved in conversations. So if there is a community of practice of researchers who meet regularly to actually bring these questions to the fore, that would be a good starting point. There are lots and lots of resources out there. Organisations such as the British Educational Research Association, British association of Applied Linguists, British Psychological association, they all have websites with materials directly thinking about ethics. So whether they're called guidelines, whether they're called principles, whether they're called whatever they're called, there's a code of practice. I think one of them has. It's worth taking a look at those.
Judith Hanks [:There are also publications, journal articles, books and so on, but I won't go on. So it's a question of picking what's interesting to you and reading and discussing. Final thing I wanted to say really, was that what we want to do, we want to encourage creative, innovative, collaborative methods. But we do also need kind of clarifications about why are these things being done? What. What's the purpose? How is it going to be managed?
Emily Goodall [:Thank you. I did just have one final thought. What if somebody wants to be a reviewer? Would you recommend they become a reviewer?
Judith Hanks [:Yes, I would, surprisingly so not surprisingly, really, it is a very interesting, worthwhile thing to spend your time doing. And there's, you know, there is always some changeover, so people tend to do the role for two or three years and then they step down. So there's, there's, you know, constant movement and flow. I think if people are interested, then they should get in touch with their current school ethics lead or departmental ethics lead, depending, and just talk to that person about what does the role entail. The committee that I'm on has been described, not by me, as one of the best committees in the university. What pleases me the most is that the reviewers attend regularly and they contribute an enormous amount. So that there is a wealth of knowledge and expertise, but also wealth of good feeling. You know, you're actually doing something practical that will help your colleagues.
Judith Hanks [:So, yes, I would recommend it.
Emily Goodall [:I think that's a beautiful note to end on. I think it would be wonderful if the result of this episode is that we had some more people coming forward and asking about being an ethical reviewer within their own institutions, because it is a really positive and worthwhile thing to do. Thank you so much for joining us. It's been a real pleasure talking to you. Your enthusiasm and passion for research ethics is actually really refreshing. And as I've said, I hope you've really inspired some positive vibes towards our ethical reviewers. And I'd encourage listeners to perhaps say a little bit of a thank you and reward and recognize the reviewers in their local institutions. So all that's left for me to say is thank you and goodbye to all of our listeners.
Emily Goodall [:And I hope you join us again soon.
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