Voices ResourcesA website for the worldwide community around the journal Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy

The Challenges of Research Ethics Approval Processes for Students

A surprising and intense experience immediately on arrival and during my first four years in New Zealand (I have now celebrated seven years) was the personal and departmental engagement with our University Human Ethics Committee. My first encounter with the process included meeting the Chair of Research Ethics at that time, a strong and vociferous force who had been charged with responding to the backlash following a notorious breach in research ethics in New Zealand, some years before, which had resulted in a strong sharpening-up of ethical approval process for any clinical research at all the NZ universities. All universities were taking it seriously but our chair was particularly steely and knew that confidence in research ethics had to be regained.

Dileo (2005) lays out clear and helpful guidance about ethical approaches to music therapy research and her chapter in Music Therapy Research (Ed: Wheeler, 2005) is an excellent starting point to thinking about research ethics for students. However, in my first year of negotiating and assisting six second year music therapy research thesis students along the research proposal and ethical approval path at Te Kōkī, New Zealand School of Music[1] in 2005, we had what felt like a phenomenal mountain to tackle. The students were undertaking real life projects based on existing case work, and so ethical approval was a requirement. There were two separate ethical processes, one to the university human ethics committee and following this approval, a second step to the health and disability ethics committee (HDEC) whenever there were music therapy clients in hospitals, or ‘vulnerable participants’ which was the case for most student projects. Sometimes school placements did not need the second step, but our Chair of Research Ethics was not advising taking any chances. In two cases, there was even a third application to the District Health Board ethics committee, because DHBs have their own separate process. I am actually amazed that everyone finished their Masters’ degrees by the deadline. It was absolutely trial-by-fire, especially as I was very green to New Zealand research ethics, and this was virtually the first time the university committee or HDEC had encountered a music therapy application. This is not quite true, the first applications were made by Dr Daphne Rickson and Christine Archer, but as experienced music therapists they at least had a strong sense of ethical process in their practice. For new Masters’ student researchers pre-registration, the pitfalls of application for approval were many and varied.

The Ethical Approval Process as a Learning Journey About Research

Since this time I have learnt, shared and been trained and advised and, along with Daphne my lecturer colleague, have assisted around 36 students through our university’s individual applications for ethical approval. In some ways, it has been some of the best learning that I personally have received about music therapy research. There were so many helpful requirements:

• a clearly stated question,
• a method to be articulated,
• frameworks for interview questions to be decided, or analysis procedure for audio or video of musical material,
• informed consent processes to be followed for participants,
• seeking assent wherever possible for young or vulnerable participants,
• simple information sheets in child-friendly language to be developed,
• risks versus benefits to participants and researchers to be assessed,
• critical thinking which links knowledge of the Code of Ethics in music therapy practice (MThNZ 2006) with the university code of research ethics (Massey University 2010)
• for us in New Zealand, understanding to be made of the Treaty of Waitangi.

In health care terms this last point means (very simplistically) health outcomes for Māori are to be determined by Māori, and if you have Māori participants, you will need to have appropriate consultation and guidance, and perhaps a Māori collaborator to assist with the project goals.

However, it was challenging sometimes as staff members with years in the field, to understand all the implications of the questions (about, for example, a student project with children on the autistic spectrum, or elderly mentally ill people) let alone be a brand new researcher and practitioner attempting it. Students needed large amounts of supervisor assistance to complete the 17-page form. In retrospect, some students – like me – have volunteered that going through the process has afforded them some really inspiring learning. A couple of examples have been 1) attending the 12- strong ethics committee meeting about their project and answering questions, and being given very encouraging feedback about the value of their research, and hearing the debates and concern for vulnerable people from the lay committee; and 2) undertaking Māori consultation and making some strong relationships and having their practice and research really encouraged by the Māori community. However the timelines were really pressurising for completing research in a year, and any delays (student health difficulties, or the committee deciding it should be University instead of HDEC application, when you have already completed the other form) were very stressful for getting things done in the allotted time allowed for a Masters’ degree.

As time has gone by, we have had more students undertaking with the health and disability ethics committees what is called "expedited review" of their research because they were doing a case study or action research project (with the student as sole participant). This meant a shorter process with a nominated senior member of the ethics committee evaluating lower-risk studies on a much simpler form. If the student was the only participant, reviewing their own case material and not interviewing or doing anything different than regular practice, then HDEC and our university encouraged this approach. During the same period I had two very helpful conversations with Professor Jane Edwards and Professor Barbara Wheeler about research ethics with student projects (Edwards, 2008; Wheeler, 2008). Their reflections included particularly the value of building good interactive relationships with ethics committees, such that the committee members understood better the particular nature of music therapy work and likely processes in research. A second issue was a brief comment from Jane that she had established an approval process for a cohort of students, where (as long as there was no active research intervention) the committee gave the approval to the programme (or lecturer) for research that met the low risk framework established.

Te Kōkī, NZSM Template for Ethical Procedure in Music Therapy Student Research Projects

When our current Massey University Director of Research Ethics, Professor John O’Neill, had a discussion with us in 2010 about our overall research applications and his interest in helping our department create a template for our student projects that were focussed on reflecting on case work (or using process notes, a research approach described by Barry and O’Callaghan in a Nordic Journal article in 2008) we jumped at the chance. Daphne and I were intrigued and pleased to have an opportunity further to build our relationship with the Massey University committee with whom we had negotiated for some years and to explore our own version of a research ethics template.

The result, after some detailed and intensive work making the application, with active help and guidance from John O’Neill, was formulating a detailed Ethical Guidelines for NZSM 526 Research Projects for our Casework and Research second year paper (Rickson & Hoskyns 2011). We were given three-year approval for the template, as long as student projects conformed to the framework of the following:

• Secondary analysis of data[2] (Heaton 2004);
• Theoretical research, where a theory is developed about practice usually using secondary analysis of music therapy practice data (Bruscia 2005);
• Descriptive or exploratory case study research where the researcher is the sole participant (Stake 1995, Yin 2009)

It has meant that if a student wants to do an experimental or other sort of study, with active participants, they have to make a separate ethical approval application. So far all students have opted to use the ethical template. We are in the second of the three years of approval, and though I originally worried that we would perhaps have formulaic research and the students would not learn so effectively about research ethics, so far I personally (and I think my colleague Daphne) have been cautiously delighted at this development in our Masters’ research studies.

To allow for in-depth learning, my colleague has developed a first year assignment in which students complete the ethics application form for research with human participants relating to a research project which they have studied in class. They often find this very hard, but it encourages active work and debate on their part. They then pass through an ethical process with their own second year research project (usually using ‘secondary analysis of data’ as the methodology) for which we as supervisors are the gatekeepers.

Some Suggested Benefits of the Research Ethics Template

We have not yet evaluated this process in detail, but the main benefits informally have been a) giving some clear and simple boundaries about the kinds of research that are possible, and having a straightforward set of guidelines to follow; b) having less uncertainty about our timelines, such that the research can be completed in a timely way; and c) lowering of student and staff stress levels at the beginning of the research year and allowing students to take some helpful responsibility for ethics, without overwhelming them with the difficulty of the application process for their first piece of research. An interesting development locally has been an approach from another department in health sciences to look at our template and to develop a similar process for their student projects. The Massey University Human Ethics Committee had recommended that they used our application and template as a model. It was a really good feeling! Music therapy had pioneered something in our university that might be useful for other lower risk health research. I would like to acknowledge the exciting collaborative work undertaken with Dr Daphne Rickson and Professor John O’Neill in pursuit of a workable ethics process for student research, and the guidance in recent years of Jane Edwards and Barbara Wheeler. Thank you, inspiring colleagues all.

Notes

[1]Te Kōkī, New Zealand School of Music is the joint music school of Massey University, University of New Zealand and Victoria University of Wellington. As the music therapy department is housed on the Mount Cook campus at the Massey University site, and department staff employed by Massey, we have followed the Massey University processes for ethical approval of research.

[2]Secondary analysis of data is described as a process of reviewing data that has already been collected for another purpose (e.g. music therapy session notes), and this data is then ‘re-used’ for research. If the practitioner and researcher is the same person, the data is known as “auto data” (Heaton, 2004, p13).

References

Barry, P., & O'Callaghan, C. (2008). Reflexive journal writing: A tool for music therapy clinical practice development. Nordic Journal of Music Therapy, 17(1), 55-66.

Bruscia, K. (2005). Developing theory. In B. Wheeler (Ed.), Music therapy research. (pp. 540-551). Gilsum, NH: Barcelona Publishers.

Dileo, C. (2005). Ethical precautions in music therapy research. In B. Wheeler (Ed.), Music therapy research. Gilsum NH: Barcelona Publishers.

Edwards, J. (2008). Personal communication.

Heaton, J. (2004). What is secondary analysis? Reworking qualitative data. London, UK: SAGE Publications Ltd.

Massey University (2010). Code of ethical conduct for research, teaching and evaluation involving human subjects. http://www.massey.ac.nz/massey/fms/Human%20Ethics/Documents/MUHEC%20Code%202010.pdf

Music Therapy New Zealand (2006). Code of ethics for music therapy research in New Zealand. (Wellington: MTh NZ )

Rickson, D. & Hoskyns, S. (2011). NZSM Master of Music Therapy Programme, ethical guidelines for NZSM 526 research projects. Wellington: New Zealand School of Music.

Stake, R. (1995). The art of case study research. Thousand Oaks: Sage Publications.

Wheeler, B. (2008). Personal communication.

Yin, R. K. (2009). Case study research: Design and methods (4th ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

How to cite this page

Hoskyns, Sarah (2012). Learning about ethical research practice: with students and with human ethics committees. Voices Resources. Retrieved January 08, 2015, from http://testvoices.uib.no/community/?q=fortnightly-columns/2012-learning-about-ethical-research-practice-students-and-human-ethics-committe