Human Research Ethics Committees in Technical Universities

Human Research Ethics Committees in Technical Universities

Koepsell, D.R.
Brinkman, W.P.
Pont, S.C.

Technology, Policy and Management

2014-12-01

Human research ethics has developed in both theory and practice mostly from experiences in medical research. Human participants, however, are used in a much broader range of research than ethics committees oversee, including both basic and applied research at technical universities. Although mandated in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia, non-medical research involving humans need not receive ethics review in much of Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Africa. Our survey of the top 50 technical universities in the world shows that, where not specifically mandated by law, most technical universities do not employ ethics committees to review human studies. As the domains of basic and applied sciences expand, ethics committees are increasingly needed to guide and oversee all such research regardless of legal requirements. We offer as examples, from our experience as an ethics committee in a major European technical university, ways in which such a committee provides needed services and can help ensure more ethical studies involving humans outside the standard medical context. We provide some arguments for creating such committees, and in our supplemental article, we provide specific examples of cases and concerns that may confront technical, engineering, and design research, as well as outline the general framework we have used in creating our committee.

engineering
design
research ethics
human subjects
technical university

http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:210df1ab-21cd-4447-ae14-1f2d8958d970

SAGE

1556-2646

Journal of Empirical Research on Human Research Ethics, 9 (3), 2014

Institutional Repository

journal article

© 2014 The Author(s)