Essex End Everyday Racism

Our code of ethics

An application for ethical approval of the Essex End Everyday Racism project was reviewed by the University of Essex Social Sciences Ethics Sub-Committee in October 2022. The application was approved. 

In keeping with good ethical practice, before you share any personal data online, we will ask you to provide your consent for the information to be used in the research. The data you share will remain anonymous and only be seen by staff and volunteers of The Whistle (the online platform housing the project incident form) and the Essex End Everyday Racism project team.

Verify your identity

To help ensure the validity of the data you will be asked to verify your membership of the University of Essex community by providing a current @essex email address. Your email address will not be stored and cannot be used to identify you.

Ensure your anonymity

An automatically-generated alias (e.g. " picture board") will be sent to your @essex address, and it is this alias that you use to complete the response form. If you make a record of your alias, you can use it for future submissions, so that if you share another experience we can link them together.

Save your details

If you wish, you can also download a PDF of your submission labelled only with your alias. This could be helpful if you want to keep a record of the information you have shared with this project, or use your submission as the basis of a formal report elsewhere.

Before you begin

 Before you share your experiences, you will be directed to a participant information sheet to help in ensuring that any decision to participate in the project is well-informed vis-à-vis the research aims, what participation involves and how your consent, and data, will be managed.

What happens if you change your mind?

Participation in this project is voluntary and even after you have started to complete a project incident report form you are free to stop at any time.

Managing your submission

While your report is automatically saved as you fill it in, if you do not submit it, the data will be recorded as incomplete and not used in the research. However, once you have submitted your report, it is not possible to withdraw it, as since your participation is anonymous we do not have any way to identify your submission.

What happens next?

You will be asked for your consent for the anonymised information to be used for academic purposes (reports, publications, presentations) as well as activist purposes (informs antiracist work in the University of Essex and beyond).

Raising concerns

If you have any concerns about any aspect of the way you have been treated during the course of this project then you should immediately inform the Principal Investigator Dr Maria Hudson.

If you are not satisfied with the response, you may contact the Essex Business School Research Ethics Officer Dr Casper Hoedemaekers, or the University of Essex Research Governance and Planning Manager, Sarah Manning-Press who will advise you further.