Research Ethics & Consent
Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal
Research Ethics & Consent
Research-ethics and informed-consent requirements at ASSRJ, framed for social-science methods including surveys, interviews, focus groups and work with vulnerable groups.
Research published in ASSRJ must be conducted to high ethical standards. Although much social-science research is non-clinical, studies frequently involve human participants — through surveys, interviews, experiments, observation, or the use of personal or organisational data — and must therefore meet the requirements below.
Research involving human participants
| ▸ | Research must comply with the principles of the Declaration of Helsinki where applicable and with all relevant national and institutional requirements. |
| ▸ | Authors must obtain approval from a research ethics committee or institutional review board (IRB) where required, and state the approving body and reference number in the manuscript. If formal approval was not required, authors must explain why. |
| ▸ | Informed consent must be obtained from participants (or their legal representatives), including consent to participate and, where applicable, consent to publish. |
Guidance by social-science method
| ▸ | Surveys and questionnaires: describe recruitment, consent and how identifying data are handled. |
| ▸ | Interviews and focus groups: describe consent, recording and how confidentiality is protected, especially where anonymity among participants cannot be guaranteed. |
| ▸ | Observational research: state whether observation was overt or covert, with the ethical justification and approvals for covert work. |
| ▸ | Secondary-data and archival research: state the source, terms of use and that required permissions or consents were in place for reuse. |
Confidentiality and identifiable data
Authors must protect participant and organisational confidentiality. Individuals and organisations must not be identifiable in text, images or supplementary material without explicit written consent. Personal data must be anonymised or pseudonymised wherever possible and handled in line with applicable data-protection law (see the Privacy Policy).
Sensitive data and vulnerable participants
Take additional care with sensitive personal data (for example health, sexuality, religion, ethnicity, political views or legal status) and with research involving children or other vulnerable groups. Describe the safeguards used — appropriate consent or assent and guardian permission, data minimisation, secure storage and anonymisation.
Research involving organisations and proprietary data
Where research uses confidential company or institutional data, authors must confirm they had the right to access and publish it and have obtained any necessary permissions from the organisations concerned.
Declarations in the manuscript
Authors must include an Ethics Statement covering approval, consent and confidentiality, or state clearly that these are not applicable and why. The journal may request copies of approval or consent documentation and may decline or retract work that does not meet these standards.
