Ethical Approvals
Research with human participants requires that you think carefully and critically about ethical matters. On this page, you can find information about ethics review, ethics certification, and our no-deception policy.
Approval from Aarhus University's Research Ethics Committee
We require that all studies to be run at COBE Lab have to be approved by Aarhus University's Research Ethics Committee first. This is to ensure that all projects that are granted access to our facilities and/or pool of participants follow ethical guidelines.
You can submit your study to be reviewed here. The Research Ethics Committee's website also contains a guide to the application process as well as the evaluation criteria.
When submitting, please use our consent form template (English version, Danish version), which has specifically been written to ensure that studies at COBE Lab live up to the Research Ethics Committee's requirements for informed consent.
After your project has been approved by the Research Ethics Committee, please send documentation hereof to lab management at cobelab@au.dk.
No-deception policy
With regard to the COBE Lab subject pool, COBE Lab has an explicit no deception policy, which means that deception may not be used in any studies for which participants will be recruited from the pool. Studies involving uses of deception may however gain access to other COBE Lab resources.
Ethics certification
To perform research at Cognition and Behavior Lab all researchers and research assistants are required to have ethics certification. We ask individuals involved in data collection / data processing to complete an ethics course.
It has been a standard to complete the NIH ethics course entitled “Protecting Human Research Participants". The certificate is no longer available free of charge. We instead recommend the Protecting Human Research Participants (PHRP) online course. The cost of the course is 49.99$ (Note: when buying access to the course, leave the box "Participate in CME?" unchecked. Otherwise you will be charged an additional 25$ for the course.)
Once completed please send the certificate to cobelab@au.dk.
We also accept certificates from the CITI Program and may accept certificates from other courses that researchers have taken for other Internal Review Boards.
Regional ethics approval (Health Research) - When and Why?
The Central Jutland Regional Committee on Health Research Ethics
In short: You need approval from this committee if the law requires it.
The Committee Act is a piece of Danish legislation that exists to ensure that health research projects in Denmark are conducted according to a proper ethical standard. The committee system is made up of a committee at the national level (the National Committee on Health Research Ethics, or in Danish, Den Nationale Videnskabsetiske Komité), as well as several regional committees. For researchers based in the Aarhus area, the legal body governing health research projects is the Central Jutland Regional Committee on Health Research Ethics (De Videnskabsetiske Komitéer for Region Midtjylland). Under normal circumstances, this is the committee that researchers at Aarhus University will submit their projects to for review.
According to the National Committee on Health Research Ethics (NCHRE), all health research projects in Denmark must be notified to a research ethics committee. Quoting from their website, the duty to notify comprises, among others, “trials involving live-born human individuals, human gametes intended for fertilisation, fertilised human eggs, embryos and foetuses, tissue, cells and genetic material from humans, foetuses etc. or deceased persons” (“What to notify?", 03.04.2019). Studies involving clinical trials of medicinal products for human use and clinical testing of medical devices are also covered by the duty to notify.
Research within social sciences often involves minimal intervention, which in many cases means that they don’t need to be submitted to the Central Jutland Regional Committee on Health Research Ethics (RCHRE) for a full review. For example, studies that use questionnaires and interviews, but where no human biological material is involved or collected, do not need to seek approval (“What to notify?”, 03.04.2019). However, if there is doubt about whether a research project qualifies as a “health” project, then the project should be submitted to the committee. Based on the Committee Act, an assessment will be made of whether the project should be subject to a full committee review. Researchers will receive a formal reply with an explanation of the decision including references to the relevant legal clauses.
For more information about which projects should be submitted for assessment or full review, as well as examples for clarification and links to relevant legislation, go to “What to notify?”
Other helpful links:
Website for the National Committee on Health Research Ethics
The Committee Act (Danish only)
Responsible conduct of research at Aarhus University
Aarhus University’s aspiration is for all of the university’s research activities to have the highest possible quality and credibility, with respect for freedom of research and a research climate of lively, open and critical academic discussion within and across different fields of research and research traditions. This is why Aarhus University has a policy for the responsible conduct of research and subscribes to the Danish Code of Conduct for Research Integrity, which is based on a number of international declarations and principles for research integrity and responsible research practice.
