Any Research Ethics Committee can make any one of the following three decisions after reviewing a research proposal for ethics clearance:

(a) Approval of the project/proposal as it stands.

(b) Acceptance of the project/proposal subject to specified alterations/ revisions, and

(c) Rejection.

The RECSSH will be predominantly guided by general principles of ethical research with human participants when making decisions with regard to a proposal where the decision will be based on the consensus among its membership. The applicant will be informed of the decision in writing. If the research proposal/ project is approved subject to specified alterations/revisions, the RECSSH in each case shall appoint a member (within the committee) to oversee the incorporation of the comments and revisions done.

In preparing this document we consulted the following sources of information

• Frankfort Nachmias and Nachmias, 1996, Voice recording the interviews, as suggested by Henn et.al. Foard 2006).

• Procedures and guidance of the Ethics Review Committee of the School of Social Sciences at the Cardiff University (implemented from 2004) (https://www.cardiff.ac.uk/socsi/resources/ethical_approval _of_research_procedures_and_guidance.pdf- accessed on 15th July 2013)

• Research Ethics Policy and Procedures of the school of health in social science, University of Edinburgh 2011( https://www.ed.ac.uk/schools-departments/health/research/policyandprocedures – accessed on 15th July 2013)

• Standard operational procedures of the Ethics Review Committee, (Faculty of Medicine, University of Colombo 2012 (www.fercsl.net/ERC%20COLOMBO%20SOP%20JULY%202012.pdf -accessed on 15th July 2013)