Examples of cases when ethics approval is required

For research within medicine or on medical technology, an ethics approval is almost always legally required when there are human participants. For other research areas, it is harder to intuitively assess whether an ethics approval is required or not. Contact researchethics@kth.se if you need help with this.
Examples of cases where an ethics approval is typically required include:

• Interview studies on politicians' and activists' opinions regarding city-planning projects.
  • The method and theme mean a high probability of political opinions being handled due to research purposes. Political opinions are sensitive personal information.
• Observation studies on work places where information on individuals' union membership is collected to prepare for a later statistical analysis.
  • Union membership is sensitive personal information. Ethics approval necessary even if personal information is eventually aggregated.
• Online-questionnaires globally distributed via social medias on which contraceptive methods are used.
  • The responses are traceable via IP-addresses and may reveal personal information on sexual habits or health and are thus sensitive personal information.
• Arts-based research where you furthermore have follow-up interviews on the participants' experiences where you plan to use religious or philosophical reflections.
  • The interviews as such are not arts-based and religious or philosophical convictions are sensitive personal information.
• Studies by filming how people move along walkways for an extended period, given that the pedestrians may be identifiable.
  • The scope of the method are very wide and may be expected to collect for example health data on identifiable persons, which would be sensitive personal information.
• Training AI with databases with faces from social medias.
  • Ethnic background of identifiable persons may be concluded and is sensitive personal information.
• Statistical analysis of pseudonymized MRI-images from a third party-database where the code key is not shared and the database-owner is located outside EU.
  • MRI-images contain health data which is sensitive personal information because someone can trace the images back to identifiable persons. Ethics approval is needed even if KTH does not have access to the code key.
• Interaction studies on physical contact between mobile, heavy robots and human participants.
  • Obvious risk of harm.

 

* Medical researchers should assume requirements for ethics review if inviting human participants or using their information or tissues. For non-medical areas, support may be needed to assess requirement for ethics review. *

 

Please go on to the last module for a summary!