Research!

The TL;DR: tPCA are considering setting up an ethics panel so that individuals NOT connected to a university, can conduct their own research in a way that satisfies academic journal publishing standards. Please email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. if you wish to express interest in being part of the set-up process, or keep your eyes peeled for future updates if you wish to publish (and/or be on the eventual research ethics panel). You DO NOT NEED RESEARCH EXPERIENCE to be part of this process. You simply need to be interested in creating a process. We hope to set up support for people looking to submit research proposals in future, but this is just to set up the back-end support.

The TL: Research, which I choose to define here as “having a question you want to find the answer to, and attempting to find those answers” is not easily possible if you wish to involve others in said research and publish that research in an academic journal, but don’t belong to a university. Anyone wanting to publish their work must make a declaration that they have had their research idea passed by an ethics panel.

Currently in the UK, almost the only way to have your work considered by a research panel, is to be connected to a university in some way. This means therefore, that research is suffering from a gatekeeping epidemic, where the only people with access to an ethics panel tend to be those who are way too overworked to do the research they wish they could do. It also creates a level of elitism, where only people educated to university level are connected to universities and therefore able to carry out research.Recently at tPCA we started considering this idea, in a conversation that arose out of the research Community of Practice group. At the same time, LJ (one of the trustees, who was also involved in this conversation) is currently one of two action editors for the student edition of the PCEP journal, which is focusing on student entries. What we have found is (exactly what we expected) that student research is being conducted at a high level and currently we have enough pieces of work that are already published to fill two special editions, with another expected dozen pieces of work still in the process. Whilst this work has mostly been dissertation work for undergraduate and postgraduate students, that hasn’t been entirely the case, and we have had at least one piece of work published by a level four student, thus proving the point that you do not need a degree to be writing at publishable level.

After the conversation in the research group, LJ had a conversation with the trustees, with the net result at that the recent tPCA conference, we held a workshop on the topic to discuss further, and see if there was any energy for seeing if tPCA could hold its own research panel. LJ has spoken with a university ethics panel, and become aware that there is at least one other charity (the NSPCC) who also have an ethics approval process, and essentially, if they can do it, we think we can!

We are still in the very beginning processes of this, and currently, are asking people for expressions of interest in setting up this body. We need people who are interested in governance documentation, in complaints procedures, and people who want to be involved in creating the paperwork for the projects themselves. We potentially also need people who are interested in putting this section of the website together once the documentation is created. You don’t need to silo yourself to just one aspect - we recognise that the three areas are interlinked, but also know that some people may have more interest in some aspects than others.

At this point, it might be easy to think that you have no research experience so can’t be involved. No research experience is needed. What we need are people who can ask the questions around “what would be the process if X thing went wrong?” And then work to build a policy and process to hold X process. Ethics panels are about (as much as possible), protecting participants from possible harm as a result of participating. Those are the questions we are asking and answering. We have the governance documents from the NSPCC, and have no intention of plagiarising, but also no intention of reinventing the wheel. That is to say, we don’t have to set this up with no ideas about how to go about the process. Some people have lots of experience around governance, or complaints procedures, others will have research experience and have had to consider what questions they need to answer.

What we are asking for from people is: The ability to commit to a monthly meeting for up to two hours, alongside doing up to an hour of work on your aspect of the project between that time. The hope is that we will have enough people so that there will be several people working on similar aspects at the same time, so that one person isn’t “doing the whole complaints process” for example. We recognise that life can get in the way, and that some months will be more possible than others. If this level of commitment feels too much and you’d like to be involved, please also feel free to drop me an email and I’d be really pleased to have a conversation with you.

Outside of that, this is something we at tPCA haven’t done before, and we will be muddling our way through together. There is no guarantee that this will work! We need enough people who can commit to the creation, and who can be on the research ethics panel - a panel cannot, by definition, be ethical if there are only two people on it, so we will need people who can be part of that (which doesn’t stop you from carrying out your own research with ethics agreement from tPCA.

For those of you interested in the end product and what it means: if you wish to use tPCA’s research panel, you will need to be doing person-centred research, and to be a tPCA member. We are a person-centred charity and everyone’s time is given for free. Our constitution is about furthering the person-centred approach, and we need to act in accordance with that. If you are already connected to a university, there will be no point in asking for ethics from us (unless your co-author/s are NOT connected to a university), as you will also always need to obtain ethics from your institution. If it’s just you running the project, you’ll be doubling your work unnecessarily. 

We hope to set up support for people looking to submit research proposals in future, but this is just to set up the back-end support. If you're interested in being part of that process, you're also welcome to get in touch.

That’s it, basically! Please, if you are interested, email us on This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.