TCPS and Ethics Chill

Research ethics review is not new to the social sciences. The Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council has had guidelines since the late 1970s. Meanwhile, institutions themselves had their own internal ethics review. Some disciplines, such as the health sciences, were already captured under other existing frameworks and policies (Stephenson et al., Reference Stephenson, Jones, Fick, Bégin-Caouette, Taiyeb and Metcalfe2020). The emergence of standardized institutional ethics review boards, however, is a relatively new phenomenon. Following a set of biomedical research scandals, the United States led the way with its introduction of institutional ethics boards in the early 1980s (Haggerty, Reference Haggerty2004; Tapscott and Rincón Machón, Reference Tapscott and Rincón Machón2025). Canada followed suit in the late 1990s. Many countries still lack centralized national ethics frameworks for the social sciences. Tapscott and Rincón Machón’s (Reference Tapscott and Rincón Machón2025) global survey of national research ethics regulations found that only 25 per cent of countries have national ethics review requirements for the social sciences. Canada is one of 15 countries where this is an explicit requirement.

In Canada, the first push for standardized ethics review came under the Tri Council Policy Statement (TCPS 1) in 1998. To ensure compliance, tri-council funding agencies (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, National Sciences and Engineering Research Council and Canadian Institutes of Health Research) made research funding contingent on compliance with TCPS (Stephenson et al., Reference Stephenson, Jones, Fick, Bégin-Caouette, Taiyeb and Metcalfe2020). By 2001, most Canadian universities had created institutional ethics review boards consistent with this framework (van den Hoonaard and Connolly, Reference van den Hoonaard and Connolly2006). These boards were charged with reviewing research involving human participants prior to its execution. TCPS provides the bounds for review, but there remains significant board discretion. Where necessary, institutional ethics boards can (and often do) require amendments to research plans. TCPS has been incrementally updated over the years. TCPS 2 was formalized in 2010, with updated language regarding proportionality and the inclusion of marginalized research participants. Characterized as an incremental but flawed improvement by some (Bull et al., Reference Bull, Beazley, Shea, MacQuarrie, Hudson, Shaw, Brunger, Kavanagh and Gagne2020; Stiegman and Castleden, Reference Stiegman and Castleden2015), TCPS 2 also included a dedicated chapter on Indigenous research. Minor amendments have been made to TCPS 2 in 2014, 2018 and 2022.

Broadly, TCPS 1 and 2 have been criticized by social scientists and political scientists specifically. At its core, most social science critiques frame TCPS and institutional ethics boards as imposing a biomedical or clinical research model (Amyot, Reference Amyot2002; Stephenson et al., Reference Stephenson, Jones, Fick, Bégin-Caouette, Taiyeb and Metcalfe2020; van den Hoonaard, Reference van den Hoonaard2011). Here, boards are thought to favour positivist or neo-positivist approaches that expect participant-focused risk management strategies, often including anonymity, formal consent and data destruction. For political scientists, this treatment of research participants may elide their social location and its ethical implications. As an example, a politician is typically considered an “elite” who has obligations to the public (Amyot, Reference Amyot2002; Naurin and Öhberg, Reference Naurin and Öhberg2021). Under this research ethics regime, however, REBs may be ill-equipped to differentiate this elite status from another type of participant.

In that vein, there is a burgeoning Canadian and American literature raising concerns over this form of standardized ethics review. A survey of this literature reveals the following recurring and interrelated critiques:

• • Institutional boards are slow, undermining research that is responsive to a particular moment (Amyot, Reference Amyot2002; Zywicki, Reference Zywicki2007);

• • REBs often fail to weigh the benefits of the research against its risks, particularly as it relates to elites and their accountability (Porter, Reference Porter2008a, Reference Porter2008b);

• • While TCPS emphasizes participant risks, legal and reputational risk aversion may take precedent (Amyot, Reference Amyot2002; Hemming, Reference Hemming, Sriram, King, Mertus, Martin-Ortega and Herman2009);

• • Due in part to ambiguities around risk, there is a great deal of inconsistency between REBs (Haggerty, Reference Haggerty2004; Stephenson et al., Reference Stephenson, Jones, Fick, Bégin-Caouette, Taiyeb and Metcalfe2020);

• • Conventional approaches to obtaining consent assume participants have not already incurred risk up to that moment and that the researcher is in a position to gauge that risk (Fujii, Reference Fujii2012);

• • In demanding review in the early stages of research, there is limited autonomy for Indigenous partners during the research itself. This could undermine decolonial and ground-up methodologies (Auger et al., Reference Auger, Greene and Nath2023; Bull et al., Reference Bull, Beazley, Shea, MacQuarrie, Hudson, Shaw, Brunger, Kavanagh and Gagne2020; Stiegman and Castleden, Reference Stiegman and Castleden2015); and

• • REBs’ ambiguous mandate has allowed a mission creep into researchers’ epistemologies and theories. This could pose a threat to academic freedom (Amyot, Reference Amyot2002; Stephenson et al., Reference Stephenson, Jones, Fick, Bégin-Caouette, Taiyeb and Metcalfe2020).

It is this appeal to an ethics mission creep that is most germane to this note. As Haggerty defines it, “ethics creep is a dual process whereby the regulatory structure of the ethics bureaucracy is expanding outward, colonizing new groups, practices, and institutions, while at the same time intensifying the regulation of practices deemed to fall within its official ambit” (Reference Haggerty2004: 394). That is, the ambiguity of research frameworks like TCPS 2 has facilitated the imposition of other disciplinary norms upon Canadian political science.

The consequences of an ethics creep may not be felt evenly. Critical and insurrectionary scholarship—typified by its challenge to existing hierarchies, modes of domination, and oppression, including disciplinary norms (for a discussion, see Nath et al., Reference Nath, Tungohan and Gaucher2018)—may paradoxically be forced to extend protections to the same elites it critiques (Alvesalo-Kuusi and Whyte, Reference Alvesalo-Kuusi and Whyte2018). This may include minimizing risks to elite participants like public officials, which could frustrate attempts to critique those same officials and their work. Likewise, TCPS (2022) expects researchers will allow participant withdrawal of data unless impossible or impractical. Here, situational methods more common to critical research, like confrontational or deliberative interviews, could be rendered impossible (Söderström et al., Reference Söderström, Holdo and Junman2025). For some, particularly those with job security, these consequences can be managed through exchanges with their REB over time.

But not all researchers have the time and authority to manage this dialogue. Writing on the original TCPS, Amyot (Reference Amyot2002) anticipated that the new ethics regime may disproportionately impact graduate students. He argues that graduate students are susceptible to blanketly accepting board recommendations. He further observes that these same students have “no clear lines of appeal” and may not bear the “unacceptable cost” of waiting for REB responses. For these reasons and more, Amyot anticipated that ethics creep “may lead graduate students to opt for theoretical topics, even when empirical research is much more appropriate given their interests and capabilities.” This view is not unique to political science (see AAUP, 2001; van den Hoonaard and Connolly, Reference van den Hoonaard and Connolly2006). Amyot terms this “ethics chill” to characterize the avoidance of human participant research in response to a new ethics regime.

This anticipated ethics chill recognizes the unique vulnerabilities graduate students face. Graduate students have tight timelines with limited funding. This is most evident for one-year MA programs. For PhD programs, students might only seek ethics approval after course work, comprehensive exams, and an accepted internal thesis proposal (for example, see McMaster University, 2024). Ethics boards can take several months to review applications. One estimate suggests ethics review takes three months but potentially longer for complicated research (Queen’s University, 2025; also see UBC, 2021). The vast majority of applications require revisions. For example, Dalhousie (2025: 7) only approved 9 per cent of applications at their first submission while 82 per cent required two or more rounds of review. This excludes the 37 per cent that were “withdrawn for quality control.” In a four-year program, this may leave roughly two years for the field work itself—including recruitment and travel grant applications—thesis writing, revisions and defence. This timeline can be further complicated by participant withdrawal periods, which TCPS (2022) requires unless impossible or impractical. This challenge is joined by pressures to publish, teach, obtain funding, provide research assistance and apply to jobs.

The empirical demonstration of this ethics chill, however, has been limited. Will van den Hoonaard investigated this potential in the mid-2000s through a dataset of MA theses in between 1995 and 2004 across six disciplines (sociology, social work, gerontology, anthropology, women’s studies and linguistics). Writing with a colleague on Anthropology, they found that Master’s theses involving human participation have increased as a proportion of the whole (van den Hoonaard and Connolly, Reference van den Hoonaard and Connolly2006). For Sociology, however, van den Hoonaard (Reference van den Hoonaard2006) observed a discernible drop in theses involving human participants and field work. These contradictory results suggest the social sciences cannot be treated as a monolith. The discipline of political science could be uniquely impacted by an ethics chill, given its direct engagement with people in power. In fact, the Canadian Political Science Association (2010) raised this very possibility.

Writing in 2025, a focus on political science master’s theses would be problematic. Increasingly, Canadian political science departments are opting for Major Research Papers (MRPs) over theses. MRPs are generally shorter documents (i.e., journal article-length) that allow for quicker program progression. It is possible that MRPs are a partial response to the burdensome research ethics regime; however, other factors, such as limited funding, may also be at play. MRP programs are generally one year in length, which aligns with the duration of SSHRC (CGS-M) funding and minimizes demand on internal graduate funds.

With this in mind, this article fixates on the following research question: has Canadian institutional research ethics review chilled human participant-driven research production in political science doctoral theses? Drawing on the preceding review, this article tests three hypotheses. First, in keeping with Amyot’s (Reference Amyot2002) expectations:

There is an argument that this chill has waned over time. TCPS 2 was explicitly designed to address the concerns of social scientists. During the process, scholars and social science associations were invited to participate in shaping the new code. In fact, some, like the CPSA (2010), have even characterized the new code as an improvement. Thus, we have hypothesis 2:

Others anticipated that TCPS would introduce a shock that scholars or REBs would manage over time. Haggerty argues that the ambiguity around research ethics “is crystallizing into a more regular and predictable form” (Reference Haggerty2004: 392). They further anticipate “researchers will choose to employ certain types of unproblematic and often predictable research methodologies […] to follow what they perceive to be the path of least institutional resistance” (412). By contrast, Porter sees the ethics regime itself as backing down over time: “it is likely that at a certain point opposition on the part of SSH researchers will increase and the legitimacy of the arrangements will be damaged, as will the ability of the regime to elicit the degree of voluntarism and acceptance that is needed to sustain it” (Reference Porter2008a: 498). If either case holds true, we would anticipate a decline in human participant research following TCPS and then a rebound. This raises hypothesis 3:

Model Specification and Data Collection

To test these hypotheses, this article offers an original dataset of political science doctoral theses published between 1990 and 2019, the year preceding the pandemic. This dataset covers the online theses of 11 institutions, including across several databases where there were evident coverage gaps (see Appendix for list of databases). The institutions were chosen to ensure geographic and linguistic diversity. Each thesis was reviewed for the following information: topic (international or domestic scope), methodology (human participants and method(s) used), year uploaded, SSHRC acknowledgement, and language (English and French only). Special attention was paid to the abstracts, methodology sections and appendices. In total, this dataset represents a working sample of 1124 PhD theses.

Controls

Institution is a categorical variable indicating the PhD-granting university. PhD programs vary by institution. This includes funding arrangements, expected timelines, comprehensive exams, and linguistic requirements. Moreover, existing literature notes that ethics boards exhibit spatial inconsistencies (Haggerty, Reference Haggerty2004; Stephenson et al., Reference Stephenson, Jones, Fick, Bégin-Caouette, Taiyeb and Metcalfe2020). Some boards may be more permissive than others. This study includes the following universities: Alberta, British Columbia, Calgary, Carleton, Dalhousie, Laval, McGill, McMaster, Montréal, Queen’s and York. York University, which is particularly known for its critical orientation (Murphy and Heffernan, Reference Murphy and Heffernan2021; York University, 2025), is set as the reference category.

International is a dummy variable indicating whether the thesis has an international or comparative focus beyond the geographic boundaries of the Canadian state. International participant research can be treated as medium or high risk depending on the destination. Moreover, as outlined in Chapter 8 of TCPS (2022), international travel can sometimes require multiple ethics board reviews spanning several institutions. International travel can also be expensive, particularly for under-resourced graduate students. For this reason, international research may encounter additional challenges that are not necessarily attributable to TCPS.

Method is a categorical variable indicating the type of original data collection method employed within the thesis. Some methods, such as surveys, often require less of a burden on participants and can quickly reach a large sample size. By contrast, interviews may introduce more risks to participants and require greater effort from the researcher. This is especially true for semi-structured elite interviews, which are a common research method in political science. As such and consistent with others’ observations (see van den Hoonaard, Reference van den Hoonaard2006; van den Hoonaard and Connolly, Reference van den Hoonaard and Connolly2006), an ethics chill may not equally apply to all methods. The following categories are included: baseline, survey and mixed (survey + another human participant method). Relative to the reference category (baseline), human participant research is anticipated to be higher per category.

French is a dummy variable indicating whether a thesis was written in French. In other aspects of the discipline, francophone scholarship has been marginalized in several ways. Rocher (Reference Rocher2007) observes that French scholarship is often undersourced in scholarly production. Rocher and Stockemer (Reference Rocher and Stockemer2017) find that Canadian Francophone political scientists are often pushed to publish in English. Daoust et al. (Reference Daoust, Gagnon and Galipeau2022) find that francophone authors are often marginalized in course syllabi. With this in mind, it is possible that French PhDs must be fluently bilingual to complete their work (i.e., literature reviews, interviewing, surveys). If so, this could foist an additional burden that may not be attributable to a research ethics chill.

SSHRC is a dummy variable indicating whether the thesis acknowledged SSHRC funding. Existing research suggests that greater funding enables graduate student success (Acker and Haque, Reference Acker and Haque2015) and supports effective research designs (Corcelles et al., Reference Corcelles, Ortiz, Liesa, González-Ocampo and Castelló2019). Research funding can help offset travel and research expenses, as well as minimize secondary work. Therefore, PhD candidates may have more time to dedicate to research ethics and data collection. There are other scholarships and fellowships available to PhD students, but the parameters and value of these sources vary considerably.

Finally, Year is a numeric variable indicating the thesis year of publication. This is to control for any temporal dimensions non-attributable to TCPS and its alternative measures. For instance, technological innovations like internet accessibility and recruitment can reduce barriers to participation (for example, see Loomis and Paterson, Reference Loomis and Paterson2018). Year is centred at 2001, the year TCPS became mandatory. Table 1 provides the descriptive statistics for numeric variables. Table 2 summarizes each independent variable’s anticipated relationship (direction) to the dependent variables.

Table 1.

Descriptive Statistics

Table 1. Long description

The table presents descriptive statistics for numeric variables, focusing on indicators such as Human, Participants, TCPS, International, SSHRC, French, and Year. It includes columns for Mean, Minimum, Maximum, and Standard Deviation. The Human indicator has a mean of 0.58, a minimum of 0, a maximum of 1, and a standard deviation of 0.49. The Participants indicator shows a mean of 57.48, a minimum of 0, a maximum of 10968, and a standard deviation of 395.61. The TCPS indicator has a mean of 0.71, a minimum of 0, a maximum of 1, and a standard deviation of 0.45. The International indicator presents a mean of 0.78, a minimum of 0, a maximum of 1, and a standard deviation of 0.42. The SSHRC indicator has a mean of 0.28, a minimum of 0, a maximum of 1, and a standard deviation of 0.45. The French indicator shows a mean of 0.14, a minimum of 0, a maximum of 1, and a standard deviation of 0.34. The Year indicator has a mean of 5.84, a minimum of -11, a maximum of 18, and a standard deviation of 8.59. The table provides a comprehensive overview of the central tendencies and variability of each indicator.

Table 2.

Summary of Hypotheses and Controls

Table 2. Long description

The table presents a summary of hypotheses and controls, detailing the expected direction of various human and participant variables. It includes rows labeled with hypotheses and controls, such as TCPS, TCPSVer, Adoption, and Institution, along with their respective expected directions. The table has six columns: one for hypotheses and controls, and two each for human and participant variables. Notable trends include consistent positive expectations for institutions like Calgary, UBC, and McGill, while TCPSVer shows mixed directions. The table also indicates the use of numeric variables to control for temporal dimensions, such as the year of thesis publication, centered at 2001 when TCPS became mandatory.