Ethical acceptability

According to the Tri-Council Policy Statement, any research conducted by students or faculty involving human subjects must undergo an ethics review process. The scope of what is considered « human subjects research » is very broad and includes the use of confidential secondary data collected by Statistics Canada and the Institut de la statistique du Québec and made available at the QICSS. An increasing number of academic journals now require proof of ethics review committee approval for all publications.

In order to facilitate the ethics review process, we provide a document outlining the measures implemented by Statistics Canada and the Institut de la statistique du Québec to minimize the risk of disclosure of identifying information. We encourage you to append this document to your ethics proposal to be submitted to your institutional review board. It is your responsibility to learn the ethics review procedures specific to your institution. Researchers affiliated with universities in the QICSS network can find more information on the ethics review process by clicking on the relevant links below. If you have any questions, please contact your institution.