Guidance and resources for ethics applicants

Find out more about applying for ethics approval, learn how to prepare a strong application, and access templates and resources relevant to your project.

How long ethics approval takes

  • Ethics applications normally take between three and five weeks to be approved, or up to six weeks during our peak times (March to May and November to December).
  • When you submit, the ethics team will pre-review your application to ensure it is complete. This takes about five working days. Your application may be sent back to you for changes.
  • Once your application is ready, it will be sent forward for review. If your application is Category A, you should receive the outcome within five working days of the committee meeting.
  • If your application is Category B, you should receive the outcome about ten working days after the application is sent to the committee for review.
  • Your application could be approved directly, although “revise and resubmit” is a common outcome. You should take this into account when planning the timeline of your project.
  • Resubmitted applications are checked by the ethics team and approved by the HEC Convenor once all issues have been resolved.
  • As a rule of thumb, allow five working days for each stage in the workflow (for example, pre-review, resubmission, committee review, and so forth).

Preparing your supporting documents

When you submit your application in Hōkai, you will need to upload supporting documents. Depending on your project, you may need to include:

  • information sheets and consent forms
  • your questions or survey
  • recruitment materials such as emails, posters, or flyers
  • guidelines for focus groups
  • a protocol for observations or user testing
  • a confidentiality agreement for external transcribers
  • other relevant communications.

If you have different types of participants, such as teachers and students, then tailor documents for each group, including parents and guardians if some participants will be under the age of 16.

You may also need to provide documents for organisational leaders such as school principals or workplace managers. This is required if you plan to collect data during workhours or if participants are speaking on behalf of their organisation. It can also be a matter of courtesy.

Document templates

Use these templates to guide the construction of your documents. If your research methods are not covered, freely adapt the templates for interviews to suit your project.

Tips for applicants

  • Make sure your presentation is impeccable. It is difficult to pick up every mistake so ask someone to check your application and documents for mistakes or inconsistencies.
  • Your application should be accessible to reviewers from outside your discipline. Avoid academic language and acronyms and, when preparing your outward-facing documents, consider the reading abilities of your participants.
  • Include all the practical details of your research. For example, how exactly will you identify and contact participants? If you are conducting interviews, where will they be held and is this location appropriate? Specify any recording and transcription plans and estimate how long data collection will take. These details are important, and the committee will notice if they are absent.
  • Read the University’s Te Tiriti Statute and consider how at least three principles inform your research and guide your interactions with participants, irrespective of their ethnicity. Focus on practical strategies and how you will implement them.
  • Check that the key details and dates of your project are consistent across the form and documents.

Resources to help you prepare your application

The Human Ethics Policy and Human Ethics Guidelines are the core documents that regulate what the Human Ethics Committee expects from applications for ethics approval. Other useful University documents for preparing your application are:

Useful external resources include: