What will I get from an ethics review?

Ethics committees commonly review research but can also add value to wider ‘evidence gathering’ processes such as service evaluations, audits, and quality improvement activities. The aim is to support researchers and staff in the production of ethical, high quality, reliable and robust data.

Ethics in evidence gathering processes, helps guide researchers to conduct their work responsibly and with integrity following accepted standards of ethical conduct. When evidence gathering is ethical, it will also be more appropriate, avoid the impact of inequalities, and lead to better findings. 

Evidence gathering processes which are well-designed, are more likely to be ethical, as they will be more robust and acceptable to participants. Support with designing evidence gathering processes in public health research, can be sought from the NIHR Research Support Service, Specialist Centre for Public Health delivered by the University of Southampton and Partners. 

An independent ethics review of evidence gathering processes can provide the following:

• Promoting good practice to ensure that evidence gathering will be undertaken with ethical integrity.

• Ensuring the rights, dignity and welfare of everyone involved in evidence gathering processes will be carefully considered.

• Ensuring researchers are accountable for responsible and transparent conduct of evidence gathering.

• Ensuring evidence gathering is relevant and well-designed, therefore reducing research waste. 

• Providing assurance to the host organisation(1) for governance approvals.

• Providing assurance to journals when submitting articles for publication.

• Providing assurance to funders when reviewing applications.

• Providing assurance to society more widely that evidence gathering has been conducted ethically and can be trusted.

• Research Ethics Committees (RECs) provide a forum to discuss acceptability from an ethical standpoint of the evidence gathering processes proposed, collectively bringing together expertise in science and ethical concepts of research, as well as public contributors. RECs can provide the following benefits:

• Provide recommendations on how to improve the design, conduct and reporting of evidence gathering where appropriate.

• Provide researchers with a learning opportunity - enabling them to address ethical issues more confidently in their work. 

• Help to provide a consensus in areas of contention, either from different stakeholders of the evidence gathering or with complex ethical dilemmas. 

• Help to foster public trust in evidence gathering processes by promoting ethical practices and the adherence to recognised standards.

(1) Host Organisation: The organisation which provides the resources for the research study and holds the main contract with the funder. It is often the employer of the lead researcher.

It can sometimes be quite difficult to distinguish between research needing a REC review and other ‘business as usual’ activities that have different accountability mechanisms, such as clinical/healthcare practice, service evaluations, or the everyday work of social workers who are accountable to their professions. 

UK wide guidance has been jointly produced by the Health Research Authority, UK Health Security Agency and Ministry of Defence (Kolstoe et al. (2025)), including classification tables that can be used to help determine whether an ethics review is required. However, it is important to note that an ethics review would also be encouraged if the researcher or host organisation considers there to be any ethical issues in the study that would benefit from an independent expert review, especially when there are no clear lines of accountability for the proposed activity. This could include sensitive research topics or populations which might be considered as vulnerable. 

If a researcher would like to seek an ethics review of their work, they are encouraged to contact the appropriate ethics committee. The ethics review pathways decision tool can help researchers identify the correct route for this. 

There is an ongoing discussion regarding research ethics processes in local authorities as a result of a paper by Levitas et al., (2025) Local authorities need tailored research ethics processes to support research capacity building. 

• Response by Kolstoe S.E. (2025) Developing healthy attitudes to evidence through the Health Determinants Research Collaborations (HDRCs).

• Middleton G, et al., (2025) Letter to editor regarding: “Local authorities need tailored research ethics processes to support research capacity building”.

• Response by Levitas et al., (2025) Developing healthy attitudes to evidence through the health determinants research collaborations (HDRCs).