Research Office FAQs

Undergraduate research funding opportunities include summer studentships, travel grants, and stipends.

Graduate research awards are available for domestic and international students.

Postdoctoral research funding opportunities can be found on the Postdoc funding calendar.

Faculty grant opportunities are posted by the UCalgary Research Services Office and the Nursing Research Office.

A Project Holder (Principal Investigator) at UCalgary must meet these criteria.

If you are planning to apply for a research grant, please contact the Faculty's Senior Research Advisor.

Click here for guidance, templates, and examples.

Click here for guidance from CIHR and SSHRC.

A Research Data Management (RDM) plan is a document that describes how you will organize, store, and share your research data throughout the lifetime of a project. It is a living document that can be modified to accommodate changes over the course of your study and does not generally contain or expose data.

Tri-Council Agencies will soon be requiring researchers to include a RDM plan with their grant applications. Click here to learn more about RDM plans and how to develop one for your project.

The Nursing Senior Research Advisor will liaise with the UCalgary Research Services and Research Accounting offices on your behalf, including assistance with completing a new Project Request Form (if applicable). 

Please forward the NOA/LOA to the Senior Research Advisor with a request to set-up your new project.

A PRF is used to request that a new project account be set-up to administer your funding award.

A PRF is required only if your grant application was not processed through the University’s Research Services Office (RSO) - which is generally the case for internal awards.

For projects requiring a PRF, please send the completed and signed form to the Nursing Senior Research Advisor who will obtain the Faculty signature and forward the PRF and supporting documents to RSO on your behalf.

Review the HR documents below for definitions of appointment types and information about benefits, vacation and special leave entitlements.

• Research staff
• Graduate students

Excellent information on hiring, onboarding, and offboarding is found on this Faculty of Nursing Intranet site.

UCalgary HR hiring guidance can be found here. 

Requirements depend on the funding agency. It is the responsibility of the project holder to contact the agency to request an extension. 

For internal grants, please contact the Nursing Senior Research Advisor.

For external grants, once official approval from an agency is received, please forward it to the Research Services Office.

The Legal & IP team in the Research Services Office oversees the creation and review of research agreements for researchers in the Faculty of Nursing. 

The Legal & IP team ensures all agreements accurately reflects the terms of the relationship and that they meet the requirements of the researchers, students, University, and sponsors involved in the research project. Their review also ensures each specific research project complies with University policies. 

Yes, the Nursing Research Office reviews all ethics applications from Nursing faculty and students before they are submitted to the Conjoint Health Research Ethics Board (CHREB) or the Health Research Ethics Board of Alberta-Cancer Committee (HREBA.CC). 

The Nursing Research Office has created ethics checklists for faculty and students to help you navigate the ethics application process. 

No. Ethics approval must be sought prior to the initiation of research involving human participants. The University’s ethics board does not and cannot grant approval for work already undertaken. Click here to learn more.

Activities exempt from ethics review include Quality Improvement (QI), Quality Assurance (QA), and Program Evaluation (PE) studies, which are understood to be those things relating to the assessment, management, or improvement of a local program. 

Learn the difference between QI/QA/PE and research studies - and whether or not ethics approval is needed before you begin your study.

Ideally, funding should be in place (when applicable) before a researcher submit their ethics application. If funding is pending, the ethics application will only move forward if the researcher assures the Research Ethics Board that the study will take place regardless of whether or not funding is received.

If the study is unfunded, but there are costs associated with the study, the PI must indicate how these costs will be covered (e.g., personal funds, department funds).

The Tri-Council Policy Statement 2 2022 (TCPS2 2022) contains the rules and guidelines set forth by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for the ethical conduct of research involving human participants and/or their data.

The TCPS2 certification is a requirement for all faculty and students who are conducting research involving human participants and/or their data. This certification must be uploaded to your individual “Researcher Profile” in IRISS prior to submitting your ethics application. The certification process involves completing the 2-3 hours TCPS2 Tutorial.

In accordance with Health Canada and FDA regulations and NIH requirements, the University of Calgary has training requirements for researchers and support staff involved in clinical research.  GCP training is required for all researchers and support staff involved in an interventional clinical research study.

(In addition, Health Canada Division 5 Training will be required for all researchers and support staff involved in a clinical research study that uses a drug as an intervention.)

The UCalgary research community is able to access GCP and Health Canada Division 5 online courses free of charge through CITI Canada.

If your project is related to cancer in any way (e.g., you are recruiting oncology patients or nurses who care for them, you want to collect data about cancers) then you must apply to the Health Research Ethics Board of Alberta Cancer Committee (HREBA.CC) for ethics approval.

While you will still submit your ethics application via IRISS, you must:

• register for an IRISS account on the HREBA website, and
• use the HREBA-specific consent and department approval templates (rather than CHREB templates).

An application that is complete, accurate, and concise may take less time because there will be less back and forth between the Nursing Research Office (NRO) and the researcher prior to obtaining the Faculty signature, and then between the ethics board and the researcher once the application is submitted to CHREB or HREBA.CC. 

Overall, please allow at least 4-6 weeks to complete the entire ethics approval process: NRO + CHREB/HREBA. (The NRO typically provides feedback within several business days of receiving the researcher's review request.)

If AHS operational approval is required as well, please allow for a few additional weeks.

Yes, all ethics applications must include a budget document which details the cost breakdown of each item.

• Funded or unfunded studies without a detailed grant or budget -- complete the CHREB budget template found on the CHREB website.
• Funded studies with a detailed grant budget, that was submitted with the grant application -- upload the detailed budget.

Yes, you will need support letters to demonstrate that you have access to the participants and/or data that you want to include in your study. Support letters should be uploaded to the IRISS ethics application (Documentation, Section 12.0).

For example, if you are recruiting patients, clients, and/or staff from a hospital or community organization, you will need a letter from the relevant manager (or other appropriate person) that documents their support for your project, pending ethics approval. 

Letters of support can be either a formal letter or an email exchange between the parties that has been captured via screenshot or as a PDF.

For research involving human participants or their data, please review the University’s data retention rules here. 

Data from human research should be retained for 5 years after study closure.* This includes identifiable information such as recordings and identifiers. Identifiable data should not be automatically removed following data collection, but rather retained as per a master list. The only time it is permissible to remove identifiable information is if a participant withdraws and asks for their data to be removed.

*Data from Health Canada-funded studies must be retained for 25 years.

Several types of consent templates are provided in the Resources (Forms and Templates) section of the CHREB website.

Informed consent forms for cancer-related research can be found on the HREBA.CC website.

Electronic documentation of consent may be used when researchers conduct the consent process with participants in person, as well as when potential participants are not physically present with the researcher during the consent process. Additional guidance can be found here.

CHREB requires consent forms to be written at a grade 8-10 reading level. CHREB recommends the Hemingway App to check the reading level of your consent form.

Yes. For more information:

• read the Chart reviews FAQ on CHREB's website, and
• review CHREB's guidance document on this topic.

If you are using the Qualtrics online platform in your research project to collect survey data, you may use the following information in your ethics application and informed consent form(s) to describe the data security and privacy protections:

The University of Calgary uses an online survey tool called Qualtrics. It is the online-website survey platform from which the ________ survey will be conducted on. As per Qualtrics’ statement and the University of Calgary's policies and regulations regarding the use of this survey tool, the end-user account is only accessed by the research team, and data is not transferred to third parties for any other purposes. This survey does not ask for personal identifiers or any information that may be used to identify participants. All data collected using the software are stored on a Canadian server.

• Qualtrics' privacy policy can be found here. 
• The security statement from Qualtrics is located here.
• UCalgary's policies and regulations related to the use of Qualtrics are found here.

Requests for changes to approved research projects need to be submitted to CHREB or HREBA.CC prior to implementation.

To create a modification in IRISS, simply go into your approved ethics application and click “Create a Modification.”

Changes that substantially alter the nature of an approved project may be assessed as a new research project and require that a new ethics application be submitted.

Ethics approval is valid for one year.  You will receive an e-mail directly from IRISS 30 days before your ethics certification expires. Once you receive this e-mail, you can log in to your ethics application and press the “Create a Renewal” button.

Guidelines regarding renewal applications in IRISS are found here. 

Ethics certifications are valid for a one year period. The onus is on the Principal Investigator (PI) to ensure studies are renewed in a timely manner.

The management of expired ethics certificates is an automated system process via IRISS. Any funding associated with expired certifications will be suspended within 30 days of an expired certificate. Please read this guidance document for more information.

A study can only be closed when ALL data collection procedures have been completed.

Studies that have completed subject recruitment (i.e., closed to accrual) are not considered closed if data related to the subjects are still being collected. If a study is grant funded, a completion notice should not be submitted to the ethics board until there is no active grant that requires ethics approval. 

To create a closure in IRISS, simply go into your approved ethics application and click “Request Closure”.

Updating the study team does not require an ethics modification. Simply log in to IRISS, click on your approved study, and then click on the “Update Study Team” button on the left hand side. A dialogue box will pop up for you to add or remove team members.

Ideally, you should have an ethics certificate active as long as the project is active, including when you are analyzing data or writing manuscripts.

The Nursing Research Office only reviews your initial ethics application. 

If your study will require access to any AHS health information/data, patients, staff, facilities/sites, or other resources you must request operational approval from AHS before you begin.

AHS operational approval is requested within the IRISS ethics application. See this page for full details on how to access the AHS module within IRISS. 

It typically takes 15 business days for AHS to process and approve operational access requests. However, more complex studies (e.g., requiring access to multiple sites or large datasets) may require additional time.

AHS will notify the study PI directly once operational approval has been granted.

Yes! Click here to review our guidance on recruiting different types of participants. 

Pre-approval is required prior to accessing Faculty of Nursing students, faculty, staff, or other resources (e.g. space, bulletin boards) for research purposes.

While completing your ethics application, please also fill out this form to initiate this approval process.

Please review the CHREB guidelines for recruiting minors.

A mature minor (minor with decision-making capacity) typically provides consent to participate for themselves, even if they are not legally emancipated. Parental consent is not applicable unless the minor does not have the capacity to make an informed and voluntary decision (usually if they are under 14 years of age). Therefore, you do not need to involve parents in the consent process unless the study specifically is recruiting parent-children dyads or minors without decision-making capacity. 

All UCalgary faculty, staff, and students have free access to the Qualtrics online survey platform.

There are a variety of digital recorders that you can use for quality recording of interviews and focus groups. The Nursing Research Office recommends Olympus recorders. 

If you want to record an interview over a landline telephone you will need an adapter that hooks into the telephone and plugs into your audio recorder. 

If you want to record an interview via Zoom, there are recording options available for audio and video recording (note that you must follow the procedure described in your approved ethics application). See below for more information on Zoom settings for audio recording.

Faculty members may request access to our list of recommended transcriptionists.

Determining the sample size for a particular qualitative study will depend on the methodology, conceptual framework, sample, etc. If you’re a student, discussing this issue with your supervisor and committee would be a good idea as they will have experience with this.

See below for some articles to get you thinking about your sample size for a qualitative research project:

• https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/qmr-06-2016-0053/full/html
• https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13645579.2018.1454643
• https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12874-018-0594-7

Electronic data should be both encrypted and password protected, and stored on a secure UCalgary or AHS server, and not on an individual computer. 

The different options and their associated classification levels are listed on the ‘Collaboration, Storage, and File Share’ section of the IT Service Now website.

For students, you may use OneDrive for Business.

• Go to the website listed above.
• Scroll down and click on ‘OneDrive for Business’ for access and use instructions.

For faculty and staff, you have access to OneDrive for Business as well, along with Sharepoint, network file shares, etc. All of these allow you to share files with team members. Please visit the website above for more information about each option; ordering information is found at the bottom of the page.

If you require assistance with data storage, please contact support@hpc.ucalgary.ca.

Be sure to include all these details in your ethics application so that the ethics board is aware of the security measures you are taking.

We recommend going to the Zoom recording settings section and disabling “local recording” and turning OFF Cloud recording sharing. This means that the Zoom session will be recorded to the Zoom platform in your account. You can then download using the “audio only” button in the “Recordings” menu. You should download to a secure UCalgary server/platform (e.g., Research Team SharePoint, a student’s OneDrive for Business account, etc).

Be sure to include all these details in your ethics application so that the ethics board is aware of the security measures you are taking.

Designing a study includes developing good research question(s), choosing an appropriate methodology, estimating sample size, selecting data collection tools, and creating an analysis plan. Click here to learn more.

A good rule of thumb to follow in these cases is to obtain 25% of the sample size needed for the full research study.

The sample size calculation depends on your hypothesis test, the significance level (usually set as 5%), and the power and results from your pilot study. There are many formulas available for different research situations. Click here to learn more.

For surveys, Qualtrics has a sample size calculator.

The appropriate analysis will depend on the type of data that you collected and the hypothesis or research objective that you want to answer. Click here to learn more.

Most statistical analyses require data normality, such as ANOVA or linear regression. However, some tests are parametric-independent and do not require data to meet the normality assumption. While transformations can be performed to produce normally distributed data, this is trickier to do.

When your sample size is relatively large, then the assumption of normality may be relaxed.

When the sample size is sufficiently large (>200 per group), the normality assumption can be relaxed because the Central Limit Theorem ensures that the distribution of the noise or disturbance term will approximate normality.

When you have very small samples, it is important to check for a possible violation of the normality assumption.

Level of significance, α, is the pre-set level of error that you are willing to commit in your research, determined before your data collection. It is usually set at 0.05 or 0.01, more rarely at 0.10. 

P-value is the actual level of error found when you perform the statistical test. When p-value < α, then it supports the evidence against the null hypothesis (no effect) and your results are ‘statistically significant’. The smaller the p-value, the stronger the evidence.

It is a good idea to support a p-value with a confidence interval (CI) for the estimate or effect size being tested. The ‘estimate of the effect’ you found is only for the sample data you collected. The ‘true effect’ for the whole population may be different, but we can be assured that 95% of the time it will fall within the confidence interval.

Power is the ability of the statistical test to detect differences or effects that lead to rejection of the null hypothesis. It depends on the sample size. The larger the sample size, the bigger the power.

It is important to calculate the sample size to have sufficient power before you begin your data collection. When your sample size is small, your study might not be able to detect the difference or effect, even when it is real, because of lack of power. Click here to learn more.

Statistical significance simply means that we reject the null hypothesis (no effect). For example, a clinical trial may enrol hundreds of thousands of patients to compare a new anti-hypertension drug with the current one. Because of the large sample, the test may reject the null hypothesis that the two drugs are equivalent. However, in practice, the difference between them may be relatively small and have no real clinical significance. The clinician should not just blindly follow the results, but should combine professional judgement with statistical evidence.

Click here for some useful online resources to get started. 

Click here for some useful online resources to get started. 

UCalgary's Research Computing Services is available to help researchers with study design, interpretation of results, and writing up results for publication.

NVivo is a very useful software program designed to help you sort, organize, and analyze many types of qualitative data. Visit our webpage on Qualitative Analysis to learn more.

There are many different analysis methods in qualitative research. The approach you choose will largely depend on your project aims and goals. See this detailed listing of different types of qualitative analyses to help you get started.

For interviews, the general rule is that it takes about 3 hours to transcribe 1 hour of audio.

For focus groups, estimate about 4 hours of transcription for every 1 hour of audio. It usually takes longer to transcribe focus groups due to the number of people involved.

More researchers have started using online/automated transcription services and tools (such as Rev, Otter, etc.) in the last few years. Please see this webpage that includes a detailed list of University of Calgary/CHREB-approved transcription services. 

Yes, free workshops and support are available for students via the Faculty of Graduate Studies and the Student Success Centre.

The Taylor Family Digital Library and the Health Sciences Library provide writing workshops and individual support in the areas of literature and systematic reviews, citation styles, and reference software, among others.

UCalgary: staff and faculty members have free access to LinkedIn Learning training workshops and courses.

Calgary Public Library: everyone has access to free resources and workshops/courses through Gale Courses and LinkedIn Learning.

Click here for the UCalgary Library guide to the APA (7th ed.).

Click here to learn about different tools for organizing references.

Visit the Library website to access the Covidence web-based knowledge synthesis tool.

Click here to learn more about social innovation supports, resources, and training at UCalgary, locally, and provincially.

Authors are responsible for covering open access fees. The University’s Open Access Authors Fund was closed in October 2018 and will not be reinstated. Consider budgeting for open access fees in your next grant application. If you do not have the funds or are a student, you may wish to consider journals that do not charge open access fees.

As well, through library licensing agreements with certain publishers, APC discounts are available to UCalgary authors interested in submitting to their open access journals.

Beyond original research articles, authors can write about many topics. Here are some suggested topics and article types:

• Students in program: Literature reviews, Methodology papers, Philosophy papers, Other discussion papers, Concept analysis, Protocols for original research or Systematic reviews
• Teaching: Educational innovations, Personal essays, Simulation scenarios, Policy articles, Curriculum development, Meeting reports
• Clinical practice: Quality improvement projects, Implementation science articles, Policy articles, Best practices, Case studies, Literature reviews

Where possible, authorship should be discussed well in advance of writing the paper. Please refer to the Faculty of Nursing Authorship Policy, which uses the International Committee of Medial Journal Editors (ICMJE) Authorship and Contributorship Guidelines. Contributors to a published work who meet the following four criteria should be identified as authors.

1. Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
2. Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
3. Final approval of the version to be published; AND
4. Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.

Contributors who meet criterion #1 should have the opportunity for authorship and be able to participate in the review, drafting, and final approval of the manuscript. Contributors to a published work who do not meet all of the four criteria above, may be acknowledged.

Journals may ask for authors to identify the specific ways they contributed to the paper. The Credit Taxonomy may be helpful in classifying the different role of contributors.

Authorship order is a complex topic and needs to be negotiated as a team. Teams may use the following criterion for selecting author order:

• First author: most significant intellectual contribution to the work, led the writing
• In between: most contribution to least contribution
• Last author: Senior author: grant holder, implies seniority and mentoring of junior authors
• Corresponding author (administrative role only): at institution long term (vs student)

Here are a few resources to help you determine this:

• Journalology resources (Centre for Journaology)
• Predatory Journals Primer (Faculty of Nursing Research Office)
• Predatory publishers and conferences guide (UCalgary Library)

Click here to find guidance, training, and tools for research impact planning, monitoring, and assessment.

It can be difficult to determine whether a project is quality improvement (QI), quality assurance (QA), program evaluation (PE), or research. Generally speaking, quality improvement or program evaluation activities are understood to be those things relating to the assessment, management, or improvement of a local program or process within an institution or unit - in order to make improvements specifically in that institution or unit. On the other hand, research projects are designed to produce generalizable knowledge about particular questions, processes, interventions, etc. QI/QA/PE projects may be conducted at the discretion of the institution or unit; however, research projects are required to undergo Research Ethics Board review.

Oftentimes, this is not a straightforward question to answer. However, it is very important that a determination is made as soon as you have a new project in mind. For example, if you are conducting a 'QI project' that is actually a research project, you are technically in violation of UCalgary ethical policies - as all research projects require ethics approval. The Research Ethics Board cannot grant retrospective ethics approval.

To determine whether or not your project is QI,QA, PE, or research, please work through Steps 1-3 on this webpage.

Step-by-step instructions for submitting a formal request for exemption from Conjoint Health Research Ethics Board (CHREB) review are found here.

The intent to publish or present is generally not presumed at the outset of a QI, QA, or PE project. Dissemination of project results typically does not occur beyond the institution or unit involved.

Dissemination of project results may occur in quality improvement publications/fora.  When published or presented to a wider audience, the intent is to suggest potentially effective models, strategies, assessment tools or to provide benchmarks or base rates - rather than to develop or contribute to generalizable knowledge.

Click here to review expert guidance and access free resources and workshops.

Click here to access free tools and templates to help you manage your research project.

Tri-Council Agencies will soon be requiring researchers to include a RDM Plan with their grant applications. Click here to learn more about RDM plans and how to develop one for your project.

There are many software programs that are available to all University of Calgary faculty, staff, and students. You can log in to the University Software Distribution site for instructions and a list of the many programs that you can download. If you are working on a University of Calgary-managed computer, you can also visit the 'Software Center' (PC) or 'Self Service' (Mac) to see a list of downloadable applications.

Also, visit the Nursing Research Office software webpage for information.

The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) is one data analysis program that you can use to analyze your quantitative research data (e.g., t-tests, ANOVAs, regressions).

NVivo is an excellent software platform that allows you to analyze qualitative data such as that collected via interviews and focus groups. 

Use your UCalgary login to create a free Qualtrics account.

All data collected using your UCalgary Qualtrics account are stored on a Canadian server.

See also:

• Qualtrics' privacy policy
• Qualtrics' security statement
• UCalgary's policies and regulations

Click here to review our guidance on creating your own questions/surveys.

Absolutely! Please fill out a service request form and our Research Specialist will follow up with you.