Research involving human participants must receive ethics approval before any data collection or research activities begin. This includes elicitation, interviews, experiments (e.g., judgment tasks, acceptability studies, self-paced reading), observational studies, and similar methods. Importantly, data collected without the appropriate ethics approval cannot be approved retroactively.
Most research projects require approval from the University's Research Ethics Board (REB). Applications are submitted through the My Research portal and must be approved by a faculty supervisor before submission. REB review typically takes six weeks, and may take longer during busy periods.
One category of research may be approved at the departmental level: elicitation involving non-Indigenous speakers. In these cases, students submit an elicitation exemption application to the Department of Linguistics Ethics Committee. As with REB applications, a faculty supervisor must approve the application before it is submitted. Departmental review is generally faster, typically taking about two weeks during the academic year and four weeks during the summer. Students can apply for an exemption by completing the Elicitation Exemption Form and submitting it to ethics.linguistics@utoronto.ca.
Students should discuss ethics requirements and develop their ethics applications in close consultation with their supervisor.