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Dissertation Suite: Ethics in Research

• University of Chester: Academic Skills

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Join the University of Chester's Academic Skills Team for The Skills Pod. In this episode of our Dissertation Suite, Academic Skills Advisers, Anthony and Liz, discuss ethics in research. They chat about the importance of ethics in your research and how to ensure adherence to ethical standards in your studies. 

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SPEAKER_01:

Hello, and welcome to the Skills Pod. Today, uh myself and my colleague Tony are going to be talking about ethics. So I'm Liz Johnson and I'm one of the academic advisors.

SPEAKER_02:

And hi, I'm Tony, one of the senior academic skills advisors as part of the academic skills team.

SPEAKER_01:

So what we're going to be talking about today is just briefly talking about ethics and having a look at how it fits into the whole proposal before the dissertation. And um Tony, why why do we have ethics?

SPEAKER_02:

So ethics is something that um in the grand scheme of research in general, it's look kind of new as a kind of phenomenon. So why do we have ethics primarily came out of um the 1947, if I think Norremberg trials uh from World War II? World War II, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, so so obviously a lot of things went on in World War II that research-wise is not the most ethical as we would have today, you know. So so from the Norremberg trials, people decided as researchers, we need to protect primarily participants from undue harm. And that's the one of the main reasons why we have ethics as it is today, that we don't want to be subjecting human subjects to things that are gonna harm them, like things that happened in World War II. And as time has progressed, that's kind of evolved a little bit more to protect the environment um as well as protecting people, but it's also this idea of it's one thing to protect our participants, so not to endure harm with our participants, but to protect ourselves as researchers, but to make sure that we are doing things in the correct and proper way, you know, that we're not making certain things up, or we're not just doing procedures for the sake of it. There was a lot more strict protocol around research, whereas before that, um so we say before 47 from the trials, people were kind of doing, you know, whatever they wanted, and that's not really good because different results then are coming from different procedures, different practices. Uh I say people uh we're doing things to the environment and to people which today you'd be kind of horrified about. Um, so ethics is there to help and to govern and to support us as researchers, but primarily it's to help make sure that we are doing the correct things to kind of human participants.

SPEAKER_01:

So who knew we were gonna get a history lesson today as well? I know, yeah in this podcast. I just do know it never dawned on me that that was the tipping point, that was the whole where ethics came from. It's just well, isn't it reasonable that we would have ethics? Yeah, but it must have come about because as you mentioned, there's an awful lot of things that happen and have happened in the past that very questionable. Downright just no, you wouldn't you wouldn't do that.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah. And and and it when you think about it now and you feel like why why has that kind of been so it it's like this idea of so from the number the N Nuremberg, it is Nuremberg trials, yeah. There's a thing called the Nuremberg Code, which kind of is is stayed, and it was like 10 different things of what you expect. And this is where the idea of we'll talk about this later on. You might have heard of consent, informed consent that came about from from those trials, because obviously, you know, particularly during World War II, these people weren't subjected to consent, they they just had these things done to them, and you know, and this is from both sides as well. You know, this is um while it was primarily um um I forget the the guy's name, um but from from the Nazi um side, it was a Mangala, yes, or but yeah, you know, you were horrific, but obviously we also did things from from both sides, and obviously I think collectively as well, we decided this is not yeah, we we need to be better. So in the grand scheme of research, you know, research has happened since almost uh you know the dawn of human you know existence. Um but it's only literally in the past what it's less than 80 years, isn't it? You know, 78 years that we've actually had some form of of ethical governance to to help ourselves, researchers and and people, and that that had developments over the years. There was the Helsinki um something or other in the 60s, and then it's kind of been built upon to what we have today, but effectively things trace back to to the late 40s.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, fascinating. I'm definitely gonna do some more reading after this, after we've recorded this. So, how so the ethics uh in place to ensure the participants to ensure if it's human participants that there's some sort of guidance? Um and you know, we will talk about the differences uh in in different types of research a little bit later on, but if we focus on the the sort of human aspect at the moment, when we're looking at proposals, what are the things that as researchers we want to make sure that we're maintaining to be ethical in the research that we do?

SPEAKER_02:

So the big first one, and everyone would have come across this, so we just mentioned it there, is about consent. Um, so if you are dealing with human participants, you want to make sure from an ethics point of view that your participant knows exactly what is expected of them. What is the study going to entail? Um, do they have a right to withdraw or not? And we said we'll we'll touch on withdrawal in a little bit, um, because that's not as easy as you think. Um if you're gonna do any tests to them, you know, again, make sure that's explicitly clear what type of tests are you gonna do, whether that's a questionnaire or even if you're doing like blood samples, for example, you know, does your participant effectively know exactly what they're signing up for? And it's really important they know that so that they can have a thing called informed consent. So rather than just saying, Yes, I agree to your study, they're agreeing to it based on all of the information that you've told them. And that's why you probably would have come across um a questionnaire, or if you have got a questionnaire, you see one, you'll see loads of text before. You know, I would encourage you to read those things. A lot of people just skip down and click, yes, I agree. Um, but it's important because you have to be informed of that. So that is almost like if we think of it, kind of a little bit like a contract between yourself and your participant. And why consent is so important is there is actually a legal kind of legality to all of this. So, for example, if you said to your participant that you could withdraw at any time, and then they agree to take part of your study, and then they decide to withdraw, and then you don't let them withdraw that data. Well, you've kind of broke that contract between you and your participant, and and that's not a good ethical thing to do. So when we're dealing with human subjects, that's the primarily the first thing we need to consider is consent, and the second one, which goes hand in hand with that, is anonymity. So there's only certain times we would waver anonymity, and basically what we mean here, if you don't know what that means, is when, so for example, if I was talking to Liz and Liz gave me loads of information, I don't want to say in any research published work that Liz said this because Liz might say certain things that would identify her, or might say things that might come back on her, and it's the idea of changing that to somebody else. So I might give um Liz the pseudonym of Dee Dee, for example, um, and I would remove certain things so that information I'm presenting can't be traced back to uh Liz as the individual because that could potentially induce harm, particularly if you're talking about a workplace or you know something that's really really identifiable. So we have consent and we have anonymity. Now, the only time we would not have anonymity is if somebody has explicitly said I want my name as part of this, which does happen sometimes. Um, or for example, I've just done some research recently with a student, um, collaborative auto-ethnographic study, where that is basically both myself and the student recounting our experience, and we can't remove ourselves from that. So we're happy to have our names attributed to that experience because that is the research. Um, so that primarily, if you are dealing with human subjects, you have to have consent and you have to consider your anonymity as well.

SPEAKER_01:

How is there a difference between confidentiality and anonymity? How would you kind of it's one of those things that we hear lots of terms banded about? How would you define that for people who are sort of struggling with what it is they need to maintain? Um yeah, yeah, confidentiality is it anonym anonymity?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, they're and they're really, really closely, closely linked. So um so confidentiality is this idea of so think ahead to your like your dissertation, you're presenting quotations, I imagine. Only potentially yourself and your supervisor have seen the original transcripts. So confidentiality is all about that. Not really, you're only having to select few bits of information that can't be attributed to anybody. Whereas confidentiality as a researcher, you would have interviewed somebody and they would have told you loads of things, which might not necessarily be relevant to your research question, they might give up a little bit more part of their life, and confidentiality is effectively saying to your participant, look, only myself and maybe some other person is going to see it, maybe my supervisor. So it's kept within house, and only information that's relevant to the study is going to be presented in the research, and it obviously it's not going to be attributed to you, that's where the anonymity comes in. So try and think of it a little bit like confidentiality is making sure that people who are meant to see everything don't see it, and anything that you do decide to use that people will see is then anonymized. So it's kind of like a two-step process, if that makes sense. Yeah. Um so when you agree to this confidentiality, it's basically because you will it's particularly when you deal with people, unless you're doing a very structured interview or a survey, will quite often give up more of themselves than than they should. So, you know, you don't want to then just put that out there that everyone can see because it's basically saying between you and your participant, you know, you tell me, and it's not going to go any further, but the information you provide may be used in an anonymised form as part of the research.

SPEAKER_01:

It's just making sure that you use the right terminology in the different places.

unknown:

Correct.

SPEAKER_01:

And when you're putting together your forms, whatever it might be for the student or the participant to see, make sure you use the right thing in the right place based on what it is you want to do with the data you collect.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, because the the big one is um, you know, quite often students will say, Yeah, no, the the data's not going to be anywhere, it's going to be completely confidential, just myself. Realistically, probably your supervisor is going to be wanting to check your coding if you're doing thematic analysis, for example. So you want to make sure that your participant is very aware that another researcher um may well be looking at the full transcript. Um, because if you said it was just going to be between you and the participant, and then you show your supervisor, well, technically that's unethical because they have signed up to give you that information without realizing it's going to go somewhere else. So just keep that in mind who is potentially going to look at that before it gets anonymized.

SPEAKER_01:

Brilliant. Okay, that makes a lot of sense. I hope it makes sense to everybody out there. Um, it is a difficult it's really challenging. Challenge, yeah, to get your head around. And when you're writing the proposal, part of the process is trying to anticipate what it is you're going to need, trying to anticipate what's going to be useful, um, how you want to lay things out, how you're going to respond to it. That's why we see so many people doing um little samples and pilots so that they can get a feel for have I asked the right questions? Have I got the kind of data that I can use in the way I'm hoping to? And then we come on to withdrawal really because potentially what happens if people start down the research process and then find that participants want to drop out.

SPEAKER_02:

This is the the classic one that we see all the time. So I I used to be chair of ethics for for my old department, and we would look at all of the staff and student um kind of proposals that come through, and I still see it now in in this role where you know students are submitting their proposal. And I would say nine times out of ten, students uh will put the participant can withdraw at any time. Now, that seems on the face of it a really good ethical thing to do, right? You can, hey, you want to come if you want to, yeah. And so many years ago when I was chair, we had one of the chairs of the UK Research Ethics Board came in because they were doing an audit of all of the different um ethics boards in the university, and he was like, Why does everyone keep approving um research that says you can withdraw at any time? Because that's an issue. And we didn't really pick up on this at the time, and we were like, Why? And he basically said, Well, if you're about to publish your research, or as a student, you're about to submit, and your participant wants to withdraw the night before, ethically, you have signed that lead contract to remove all that data, and if that data is so entwined into your research, you are effectively without up a up a certain creek without a paddle, um, to put it mildly. So, this idea of on the face of it that seems like a really lovely thing to do, but actually it's quite impractical. So, there are certain times where that might be you know something that's fine, you're happy with that. Um, but really my advice would be if you're doing an interview, for example, you might say to them you've got till two weeks post-interview, or if you are somebody who's going to give them the transcript to review before you edit it, you might say you've got again X amount of weeks post that, or if you've got a Gantt chart, which all ethical proposals should have, and we'll touch on that later on. But you know, like what we're in now, we're in June. So if you said right by the 15th of August, I'm going to be starting to analyse all of my all of my data, you have up until that date to withdraw. After that time, you can't. Now, again, because that's been in the participant information sheet, and you've told them that very much up front, and they have signed that, they've given consent, they're agreeing to that date. So if they did want to withdraw after that date, unfortunately, they can't because you've already given that parameter. But if they if you didn't do that and they were to withdraw the day before, you know, ethically and legally you'd have to remove that data, which does not put you in a good position. Because apparently he said that has happened before. Um, where someone has decided actually I'm not comfortable with this, I want to remove myself. And then, yeah. So it's those little things where on the face of it you feel like you're doing a good thing for your participants, but actually for you as a researcher. Because again, remember ethics goes two ways, it's about not harming for your participants, but also not harming yourself as a researcher.

SPEAKER_01:

As a researcher, I was just thinking back to my masters, and I had I did um a multiple choice questionnaire that was filled in by about 160, I think, students across five different campuses at a previous institution, and just thinking if somebody had withdrawn from that and the try how to track it back to take this person out with the data you've got.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and that's the thing as well, is you you raise a really, really good point because again, if you have an anonymised questionnaire, so you know, for interviews, obviously you you tend to typically know who who's interviewed what and what transcript, but if you do an anonymised questionnaire and you're not collecting any identifiable data, like you know, any names or any um email addresses, it is virtually impossible unless you gave every participant, which some studies do have a unique code um for every single participant. And um, when they say, look, if you agree to this, this is your code, you can let us know if you want to withdraw. Don't see it that often. But yeah, if it's just an anonymised survey and you say you can withdraw, well, if they say that there's really it's almost impossible. Yeah, correct. How do you know? So, again, to be if that is something you're gonna do where you're not collecting any identifiable data, you put that in the participation sheet that you know, due to the anonymity of this survey, you know, if you go past this point, you won't be able to withdraw because we just don't know who you are. Um, so yeah, but you raise a really good point there, Liz about what do you do when you've got such a survey like that?

SPEAKER_01:

Because that that that's the other thing, it was like physical pieces of paper as well. It wasn't even any kind of electronic trial or you know oh dear. Yeah, something to think about.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and that leads us on nicely, Liz, actually, to to what do you do with that data? Because there's an ethical requirement um from us as as researchers. Now, that's the interesting one in terms of you know paper copies. Um, so from an ethics point of view, that should be stored under lock and key. Um ideally on a on campus, in a in somewhere that is again behind a series of of locks and keys. Um it's not really good enough for some people to say, I'm just gonna look after the paper copies or I'll have them at home. That's not particularly a secure environment, it has to be under lock and key. Um, most people nowadays will be online, so you know, making sure that's backed up on the university password protected systems and making sure those files are password protected. So, you know, if you do have a uh a spreadsheet where you have all the names and the pseudonyms, you know, that should be password protected, and that should also be on the university system. Um it is really important because um believe it or not, under research governance, that data should be kept for around about 10 years, really. Um, you know, so that's why it's impractical for you to to store something on your own laptop for for ten years in case somebody needs it, so that's why it would stay on the university system, which has those backups for years. So yeah, um you have to consider that and make sure that's in your proposal. How are you going to deal with that data? Where is it going to be stored?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it was. It was a locked um shelf in a locked office. And you know, it's just one of those things that you do and it was I guess only later you think right, okay, where where does this go to? And it had to be bound and sealed and put into safe storage. So yeah. All of these things that you can do without actually thinking have to explicitly do them.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, exactly. Uh and that's why some of the because it is such a it's probably not the thing you you might give too much thought to, but that's quite often what a student will fail their first um ethics proposal in, is because these little tiny things, which actually are so important, aren't mentioned or they're not mentioned in in great depth of of what you're doing and why it's a bit offhand. I'll I'll look after the data, it's not good enough. It's got to be really clear what is it that you're gonna do and and how brilliant.

SPEAKER_01:

Um so that leads us on, I think, to what kind of data it is you've actually collected, if it's gonna be the same for everyone no matter what they're studying. Um and I think you know, potentially qualitative, quantitative, we've already touched on those two things, how different they're gonna be. Is there a broad sort of these disciplines do it one particular way? These disciplines have a particular ethics process that's quite um rigid and set up, I'd imagine, medical possibly the tightest, are they?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, so dealing with human subjects and you're collecting like samples and stuff, yeah. That's really, really heavily regulated. So if you are somebody who's doing any medical kind of things, um like the NHS have their own kind of ethics board and and medical boards that you'll have to go through. So it is really, really detailed. You also find if you're dealing with children as well, because they obviously can't give informed consent because they're not adults, they don't fully know. So there again, that's a lot tighter for them. So those who um are doing the education, so we did project as part of the team, um, and because we were dealing with potentially some um transition students, so those who had BTEC who were coming into university, um, some of them might have been 16, 17, so technically not adults, so we had to go through the educational ethics board for that, and there's just really, really detailed as it should be, because again, yes, you don't want to harm participants, and we definitely don't want to harm children in in any way. So if you're dealing with under 18 or vulnerable adults as well, um there is tighter loops to go through. If you're just dealing with the general public, it's not as detailed, but we still have to make sure we have those key things. But I think it's also important to consider when it comes to ethics and risk about what is your method, because every method potentially has an ethical or a risk implication. So, you know, if you look at like the simple thing of an interview, a semi-structured interview, let's just say, for example, well, you've got to consider the risk element of you going to a location um to meet a participant you might not have met before. Um if you are going to a neutral location, let's just say a cafe, what do you do about the risk or the ethical implication of potentially picking up conversations on your dictaphone that people haven't agreed to be recorded? Um, and this other thing as well, we we have a video on our Moodle site um about impression management, which basically, if you it seems a really nice thing. If I interviewed you, Liz, and I said, Oh Liz, thanks for coming to meet me today. Can I buy you a coffee before we start? Seems a really nice thing to do. You know, you give up your time, I want to interview you, but you're already in my debt because I am offering you a coffee. So if you wanted to withdraw halfway through that interview, you might feel, oh, I can't because Tani's just offered me a coffee. So that's not really ethical. So a lot of students will put these really nice things in without realizing there's an ethical implication to it.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, it's a gift, it's uh bribe, it's uh incentive, all of those sorts of things, yeah.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, yeah. And it's you know, again, little things like students will often ask their friends and family, something called like convenient sampling. Um, and you see it quite often sometimes, and sometimes it's the only thing you can do because if we see a lot potentially with like student um uh teachers where they are looking at you know the practice in that particular school, so of course you're gonna ask people who are in that school, but again, there's that ethical implication of that research might not be as true or as valid than a random person because they have that investment. Oh, I don't really want to, but because I know you and I feel like that's what your study wants me to say, so I'm gonna say it. Um, so it's all those little nuances we've got to think of. And obviously, if you're doing quantitative, so again, still if you're dealing with people, we've got to you know think about all those things we've talked about. But ethics has a slightly different slant almost when it comes to the quantitative nature, is making sure our reporting is true. So again, we we find you know, and it still happens in established research where methodological procedures aren't potentially followed, or some data is fudged to make it, you know, to have a result. So a lot of students get really obsessed if they're doing a quantitative study about having a significance in their data. Um now, a non-significant result is still a result. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And a lot of students get so caught up on okay, I wanted to prove that X implements is Y, and my data doesn't suggest that. So, what they'll tend to do is then is then fudge that data, and they'll go in and they'll do it. And I've seen it before where students have done like a survey and have just rather than asking people or then tried to make that up, and it's very obvious when a student's done that because humans are random, and despite how random you think you're making those answers, they're not. Um, and yes, there is some elements of data manipulation that all researchers do. So, for example, if you're doing a chi-square test, you have to make sure that every cell has an expected count of five, and let's just say you had all different age ranges, and you might have had too many categories in there. So you might have had 18 to 25, and you might only have two participants, and you might have had 26 to 35, and you had 100 participants in. So that test wouldn't work because you wouldn't have as many in that small category. So you might group it as under 40s and over 40s, and that's fine because it's you're you're not manipulating the data, the data still exists, it's still there. It's when you then change those answers from yes to no to then make that test show a significance. That's that's the issue. Um, and again, that's not particularly good research governance, it's not particularly ethical either. Um, and obviously, when you're doing a medical study, if you did that, that is a huge implication for drug trials and all of that stuff. So um it's really important that we're doing things in the proper manner.

SPEAKER_01:

And there are redacted journal articles every year, you know. Yeah, there are holes that people discover in research, things that have been missed out, things that maybe haven't been done in the way that they should have been, so the articles get withdrawn. Um but it you know, it it is a part and process of the whole thing, isn't it? And we've all seen adverts that quote statistics at us, we've all seen information, and you know, when you interrogate it, when you look at it, you know, 100% of people prefer this hair shampoo or whatever it might be, and then you look at it, and actually there were only 14 people that were in that in that test, and it's you know, giving the impression that there were sort of half the population or that thousands of people were in it. It's very difficult to represent, you know, if you've got only got a very small sample and you're saying 99% of people agreed with that. That that doesn't necessarily mean 99% of people agreed with that. It means 99% of the 16 people you asked. Yeah, that's a very different number.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, yeah, I I see that all the time. You spot on there, Liz. And yeah, it's the hair products primarily, isn't it? You see it. Um and um, yeah, you're like, oh, right, that's it. You know, that many people agree, right? But you only have 14. And again, who were those 14? Probably employees, but it but we just don't know. And again, part of research, and this is why you will see journal articles, it's why your tutors will ask you to have a very clear methodology. You want to be transparent about what we've done, and obviously we're not talking about this today, but one thing we talk about when we talk about being critical is has a study been open about its limitations and its ethical implications to allow us as researchers to see, okay, that's what you did, that's why you did it. Um, so yeah, it's that is important to consider, regardless of what side of the research paradigms you're sitting on.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, a lot to think about, a lot to think about. So as Tony was saying, don't just take it for granted, be explicit, all the things that you want to investigate, all the different methods that you're gonna use, or you've discounted, why have you discounted them? What is the the most ethical way to deal with whatever it is you're investigating?

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, and just remember that sometimes the most obvious, nice thing, can like I said that withdrawal at any time can often be a real big implication. Um so all I would recommend is there are certain things, no matter what research you're doing, are really important. As I say, there, you know, your confidentiality, your anonymity, how you're gonna store that data, where you're gonna store it, um, you know, having that informed consent, all those things go across every single discipline, every single research um instrument. But you have to make sure that if you are using an interview or an you know an experiment, that you look into the ethical implications of that particular instrument and have that in your ethics proposal. That's really, really important. Um, and one thing I will say as well, we'll touch on it very briefly, is typically um ethics proposals will finish with a risk or risk assessment. Um, and a lot of students will say, Oh, there's no harm, um, but you don't really know that you might ask a question that you think is fine, but actually it's quite triggering uh to your participant. Um, so we should give them a signpost of, you know, if anything does come up or if anything goes wrong in in the study, you know, what's the contact point for them to talk to that person about, or you know, is it if you're dealing with something that's really quite potentially traumatic, is there a link to some help services there? Um and yeah, just never disregard the safety of yourself as well. You know, if you're going to a site to do data collection, um, I think back in my old career as a geographer, doing like transex of things, you know, you're in a river, making sure you've checked all the risk out for that, you've done that um risk assessment. Um, if you're dealing with animals, you know, or just flora and fauna, those kind of things. And again, if you're a participant who is you know traveling to see somebody, you know, follow all those standard practices, make sure somebody knows where you are, and it's same for your participants as well. You know, make sure they know where you are, they've told somebody. Ideally, if you're inviting them, have it so there's a window and a door open, so you know it's nice for your participants and stuff. Um, so yeah, just have a consideration um of those risks. So, again, a lot of students get so focused on the ethics, which is you know the main thing of an ethics proposal, we still have to consider risk as well. A lot of students get really frustrated because quite often ethics proposals will come back in their first iteration, and that's because we can't this is not one place where we can afford to be sloppy in what we write. It has to be incredibly clear because you know there is a legal, but effectively, because basically what an ethics proposal is doing is saying to you as a researcher that if you follow everything here, your participants are going to be fine, and we of a university has done everything by the book. If you don't follow what you put in your ethics proposal, or you're not ethical, then the university is liable for to be to be sued, and you are as well, as an individual, because you've not followed what you've said, and so it's also there to protect the university, yourself, and your participants. So, quite often when people someone hasn't been particularly clear, or um it's been a little bit wishy-washy, the university is not going to put themselves in a position of approving that because you haven't been clear. So, you know, if this is one assignment that you do where you are having much attention to detail, it should be your proposal. It really should be. Yeah, to get it through.

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, that's great. Thank you so much. Uh I hope it's been useful to people. There's certainly some really interesting points in there, and it is, it's all about the detail, isn't it? Take your time, don't skip over it and think, oh, this doesn't really matter. It really does matter.

SPEAKER_02:

Yeah, it really does. And and you know, as a team, you know, censorship proposals through. We will, you know, we won't be able to comment on the discipline specific, but those general kind of things we touched on, we'll be able to see if you're uh if you're hitting them or not. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01:

Brilliant. So thank you once again for listening to the skills pod. Um, I'm Liz Johnson.

SPEAKER_02:

And I'm Tony.

SPEAKER_00:

Bye. Hi there. If you're a University of Chester student, here are the ways you can access support from your academic skills team.

SPEAKER_02:

On our Moodle pages, we've got lots of interactive resources for you to use. On our Literacies Moodle page, you'll find help with a range of skills from academic rating to revision. On our Maps and Statistics Moodle pages, you'll find help with different statistical tests, calculations, and formulas.

SPEAKER_00:

You can also use our Feed Forward email assistance service. You can send 750 words, which is around three paragraphs of your work, to ask at chester.ac.uk and we'll respond within three working days with generic and developmental advice on aspects such as paragraph structure, criticality and referencing.

SPEAKER_02:

You can also book a one-to-one with the Academic Skills Advisor via our Moodle pages. These appointments typically last 30 minutes and are available online and in person. You're able to see the campuses wrapped by looking at our working scheduler. You can send across an extract of your work for us to look at in preparation for the one-to-one, or you can book a one-to-one to discuss a generic skill such as referencing or critical thinking.

SPEAKER_00:

If you and a group of your course mates are struggling with the same academic skill, you can book an Ask Together session by emailing ask at chester.ac.uk with details of your availability, how many people are in your group, what skills you want to cover, and where you'd like the session to take place.

SPEAKER_02:

You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook using the handle AkETSkillsUOC, where we post practical tips on a range of academic skills, and it's also a great way to see what the team are up to.

SPEAKER_00:

And of course you've got the skills pod. If you have a topic that you'd like us to cover, or you'd like to be involved with our podcast, please email ask at chesterbacy. Ask supporting yourself.