Social Research Ethics Committee (SREC)

Ethics applications received by 6th December will be screened and where possible logged and sent for review by 14th December. If there are any changes needing to be made to these applications prior to them being logged, we will communicate these required changes to applicants. Applications received after the 6th December will be screened and logged after the Christmas break, in January 2022.

SREC is one of three ethical approval committees at UCC (social research, animal experimentation, and clinical research). If you are unsure which University ethics committee you should apply to, please click here. UCC academic staff and postgraduate research students can apply to SREC when undertaking social research where the methodology is not clinical or therapeutic in nature and proposes to involve:

• direct interaction with human participants for the purpose of data collection using research methods such as questionnaires, interviews, observations, focus groups etc.;
• indirect observation with human participants for example using observation, web surveys etc.;
• access to, or utilisation of, anonymised datasets;
• access to, or utilisation of, data or case files/records concerning identifiable individuals;
• conducting Internet Research or research online.

As a policy SREC does not accept applications from non UCC applicants, taught postgraduate or undergraduate students. In general, applications from taught programmes should be dealt with at School/Department level. However, the university SREC will process complex or “high risk” ethics applications arising as part of taught postgraduate programmes. The high risk nature of the research should be outlined in an email from the supervisor and included with the application.

SREC @ UCC considers itself an enabling committee, promoting strong research ethics amongst UCC's community of staff and student researchers. We are open to all types of research in the social research domain.