The Importance of Centralized Ethics Committee for Universities

Abstract

The research ethics committee plays a crucial role in ensuring that all processes within the research stages are carried out according to procedures and do not violate ethical standards. Additionally, it ensures that human rights, security, safety, and well-being as subjects are well protected when involved in a research process. However, the current reality shows that University A does not yet have an institutional research ethics committee composed of medical and non-medical professionals at the university level. A centralized ethics committee at the university level is highly needed to be more easily developed and monitored institutionally. Moreover, it has the potential to receive more optimal resource allocation, ensure more comprehensive quality control of the ethical review process and procedure implementation, provide broader access for all units to obtain services, and enable more accountable and institutionalized income-generating management. This study aims to conduct an initial needs assessment to develop a centralized ethics committee institution at the university level. This type of research is qualitative, using purposive sampling, and the data are analyzed qualitatively and descriptively. The results show that of the 17 universities surveyed, 11 universities (65%) have ethics commissions at the faculty level, 5 universities (29%) at the university level, and 1 university (6%) is positioned under the Directorate of Research. All of the ethics commissions have similar rates and procedures. The study indicates that, for the development of the research ethics committee institution, there is at least a need for competent and trained ethics committee members, official appointment letters for the ethics committee members, a decree for the establishment of the institution, a secretariat office, service procedures, service information system, service rates, and administrative staffs.