All human research ethics applications must contain an Application Form and a Risk Assessment Checklist. On most occasions you will also need to provide additional documents.
For your convenience, a short-cut for access to the mandatory application and risk assessment documents is provided below.
Compliance with project monitoring requirements is a condition of approval.
The National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research requires institutions to monitor research projects involving human participants to ensure that they are conducted ethically and in compliance with the ethics approval for that project, including any conditions placed on that approval.
Therefore, whilst the maximum duration of ethics approval for a human research project at UWA is 5 years, at all times and for all projects, continuation of ethics approval is subject to the demonstration of satisfactory progress and compliance with ethics requirements.
To demonstrate satisfactory compliance with ethics requirements, the University requires all Chief Investigators responsible for human research projects to submit an annual Milestone Report, at least annually. More frequent project reporting requirements may be imposed for projects involving higher levels of risk, or where the project duration is likely to be less than one year.
It is a condition of your ethics approval that you submit a satisfactory annual Milestone Report by the due date that will be notified to you by the HREO.
In addition, if the research project is discontinued before the expected date of completion, researchers should inform the HREO as soon as possible, providing an explanation of the circumstances.
The annual Milestone Report that you will be required to complete contains all relevant questions that you need to answer and space for you to provide a brief report on your research progress.
The HREO will forward a request for an annual Milestone Report to the Chief Investigator prior to the due date, which is based on the original ethics approval date for each project.
For convenience, the annual Milestone Report may be completed by any member of the research team. However, before submission of the annual Milestone Report to the HREO, it must be checked and signed by the Chief Investigator, who takes responsibility for all information contained in the report.
Failure to submit an annual Milestone Report by the due date may result in your ethics approval being suspended, or cancelled. If ethics approval is withdrawn, a researcher must immediately stop all research activities.