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The Australasian Human Research Ethics Consultancy Services (AHRECS) team brings extensive experience and expertise to support your research ethics needs. We have collaborated with research ethics committees, regulatory bodies, and professional organisations across Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and Vietnam, ensuring compliance with international standards, including US OHRPP and ORI requirements.
Our team combines a deep theoretical understanding with a practical knowledge of regulatory frameworks. With over 20 years of collective experience, our senior consultants excel in implementing best practices in research ethics training, systems, and reforms. By partnering with AHRECS, you gain access to trusted advisors who can help you navigate complex requirements, enhance your systems, and ensure ethical excellence in your research practices.
Latest blog entries
Welcome to the AHRECS Blog
We are thrilled to kick off the AHRECS blog together with our first go at Human Research Ethics and Research Integrity resources/links/downloads pages for Australia and New Zealand. The four of us started AHRECS in 2007. We were looking for a way of responding to requests for advice on research ethics and integrity from the…
Research Ethics as Gatekeeping in Justice Institutions
The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology has just published on OnlineFirst an article by Jacqui Horan (Melbourne) and Mark Israel (AHRECS) called ‘Beyond the Legal Barrier: Institutional Gate-keeping and Real Jury Research’. Although its connection to research ethics may not be immediately obvious, we look at the reasons why so little empirical research…
Is the pre-recruitment of research participants potentially an ethical issue in Australia? (David Hunter)
I've recently published a paper focused on the UK looking at some ethical issues faced by a practice that has developed for the recruitment of research participants there, called pre-recruitment. http://jme.bmj.com/content/early/2015/02/19/medethics-2014-102639.abstract. Given the difficulties recruiting research participants, companies have formed who source research participants for researchers, particularly for pharmaceutical research. They do this primarily by recruiting…
Ethics review and self-censorship (Lisa Wynn)
When it comes to human research and ethics review, self-censorship comes in two forms. The first kind comes after ethics review. The ethics committee gives the applicant feedback phrased as questions, requests for further information, and suggestions. But the suggestions are often taken as having the weight of law by inexperienced researchers, especially students. They…
An Open Invitation to Research an Ethics Committee
Jay Marlowe and Martin Tolich have had an article published (in press) in Research Ethics examining the first year of the not for profit New Zealand Ethics Committee (http://www.nzethics.com/.) They claim NZEC is unique: it reviews applications focusing solely on an application’s research ethics and not as traditionally practiced on research governance. Whilst university and…
Is the sky falling? Trust in academic research in 2015
For anyone that has been paying even the slightest attention to scholarly publishing over the past few years, it will have been impossible to ignore what seems to be a growing number of astonishing advances published in prestigious journals presented at press conferences by proud scientists, which is then followed by questioning of said findings…
The perils of anonymous online research and risk: Two hands tied behind your back
Online research offers many advantages. If well designed, a web survey/task or other data collection tool can collect robust data from large populations, incorporating validations and other tools (including anonymous cookies to minimise the risk a participant submits more than one set of responses). These techniques can ensure any data collected is more likely to…
Sprinting to the start line: concerns with expedited ethics review
Allow me to start with a short story. A recent conversation I had with an established academic evolved as follows. The academic had funding to explore how involvement with classical music impacted a child’s development. He planned to interview parents of children, aged 2-13, who played musical instruments. The interviews were exploring how music was…
Do we need consent for the continued use of children’s biological samples and data in research – and what if the grown up children cannot be located?
Parental consent is sufficient to authorize research involving infants and young children who do not have the capacity to take part in such decisions. But what happens when the children grow up and the research is ongoing? According to the National Statement, where research is ‘complex or long-running, or participants are vulnerable’, consent ‘may need…
Is human research ethics review a form of out of date, inefficient and ineffective regulation?
As I reached page 35 of the latest NEAF application for the next HREC meeting, I wondered, with some dismay, whether the system we are using is a form of regulation that has been rejected some decades ago in most other contexts. (I was dismayed because I had chaired the NHMRC working party that developed…
Ethics and the privacy pendulum
As the development of new technologies advances at a rapid pace, the ability to access, search and link information in new and different ways also continues to grow. Current legislative and governance frameworks regarding data privacy were developed at a time when these possibilities were not foreseen and are now an inadequate fit for this…
Institutional approaches to research integrity: Tilting at blazing windmills?
Not so many years ago in Australia if you entered a research office and asked what they were doing about research integrity, you would probably be pointed sagely toward a back corner and a dusty shelf. In that forgotten corner you would find the Joint NHMRC AVCC Statement (1997) and perhaps the policies on authorship,…
Navigating ‘Research Fatigue’
In human research, some groups of people (grouped by identity, association, condition and/or location) may become over-represented as research subjects in a particular discipline, or in research generally. These people may develop a sense of ‘research fatigue’ (Clark, 2008) – in simple terms, they’ve been over-researched and now they’re just over it. It is likely…
The seductive peril of precedent-based decision making
Human research ethics committees face workloads that can very easily become crippling, consequently precedent-based decision making can appear to be a sensible survival strategy. An HREC might decide to adopt such a strategy for several reasons: • a desire to turnaround applications for research ethics review as quickly as possible; • a commitment to being…
Aboriginal research and ethics: Could we be making it harder than it really is? Six things to focus your decision making
What do we know? I wish I could say there’s a simple formula that will reduce the anxiety of researchers (both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal) when it comes to research that involves Aboriginal peoples. But I’ve found that when any of us put on a research hat (not just the lab coat), then this brings another…
Taking Time in the Midst of a Crisis: Prior Informed Consent, Sociability and Vulnerability in Ethnographic Research
As an anthropologist, the way I work has particular features which are, in my view, both empowering and paralysing. This is especially the case when working with people who define themselves or who are defined as vulnerable, and in field contexts which are challenging, difficult or unpredictable. In this post, I would like to address…
A place for expedited ethics review of time-critical above-low risk research
“Have you got ethics yet?” is a question asked frequently where health, social and behavioural sciences postgrads gather on campus. The amount of time human research ethics committees take to approve an application is also a common topic of conversation among university staff. Researchers often, it seems, grumble about delays in beginning their data collection…
Can you hear us? The Queensland experience of health research with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people
There is growing concern in Queensland about the conduct of health research meeting Indigenous research ethical principles and standards. Key stakeholders raised these concerns during consultations within the national review of Indigenous research ethics commissioned by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC). Although the final report is yet to be released, some discussions…
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