The Ethics Committee is a permanent committee of the Faculty of Psychology and reviews and assesses planned research projects in the field of psychological research at the Faculty of Psychology for ethical harmlessness with the aim of ensuring the protection of study participants and the proportionality between the risks and benefits of the research investigations. This does not apply to research projects that are assessed by the cantonal ethics committees in accordance with the Federal Act on Research involving Human Beings (Human Research Act, HRA 810.30, 30 September 2011). The Ethics Committee is independent of directives and recommendations. The committee consists of four members of the Faculty of Psychology and one external person with proven ethical expertise. The procedure and composition of the Ethics Committee of the Faculty of Psychology is governed and documented by regulations.

Applications and submission of applications

Applications can concern individual applications or framework applications. Outline applications are applications in which a research paradigm or a specific research method is reviewed for ethical safety on the basis of several individual studies. Once approval has been granted, the research paradigm or research method can be used for individual studies on comparable groups of people without further authorisation.

The secretariat accepts applications at the request of the responsible members of the faculty by email, checks that they are complete, ensures that they are assessed within the deadline and informs the applicants of the decision in writing. Applications can be submitted by email at any time and assessments are prepared on an ongoing basis. The recommended application form is provided by the Ethics Committee. The Ethics Committee usually decides on authorisation within 30 days of receiving the complete documentation.

Studies can only be conducted if a safety concept is adhered to. This concept must be submitted to and confirmed by the management of the faculty before the start of the study.

Two expert opinions are obtained for each application. Experts are proposed by the respective department chairs from among their respective members and confirmed by the Faculty Assembly. The decision of the Ethics Committee is made in consideration of the expert opinions, but is not bound by them. Decisions are made by the Ethics Committee on the basis of a discussion of the cases and expert opinions. The members of the Ethics Committee vote independently on all applications by simple majority decision. Research projects are assessed on the basis of the ethical guidelines for psychologists of the Swiss Society of Psychology (SGP) and in accordance with the Human Research Act. Any subsequent federal regulations remain reserved.

The following decision categories are possible: A) Acceptance, B) Acceptance with conditions, C) Acceptance with significant conditions, D) Rejection. There is a two-stage procedure for deciding on an application: The first step is to decide whether the application can be accepted in principle. Categories A-C count as accepted and category D as rejected. If the application is accepted in principle, a decision is made in a second step on the allocation to categories A to C according to the simple majority principle. If an Ethics Committee member does not submit an explicit assessment of an application by the cut-off date, the proposal of the reviewers is automatically adopted as the assessment. If the proposals of the two reviewers differ, the more negative assessment is chosen. If the decision is negative (simple majority in favour of category D), the application is rejected.

Accepted Category C applications must be resubmitted to the Ethics Committee after revision. Accepted Category B applications contain conditions that must be subsequently fulfilled by the applicants without the application having to be resubmitted to the Ethics Committee. If the applicants are subsequently unable or unwilling to fulfil a condition, a resubmission is mandatory. The rejection of a project application means that the Ethics Committee does not consider the project to be ethically unobjectionable. Rejected Category D applications can generally be resubmitted to the Ethics Committee. Reference must be made to the rejected application and the main points that have undergone changes must be mentioned.

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