What a Project Completion Report Requires
Ethics approval carries a tail: a summative report when the work is finished, and in one institution's wording a grade that is not released until it arrives. Here is what the form asks for, and what you have to have kept in order to answer it.
Closure is a condition of approval, not a courtesy
Most researchers treat ethics approval as a gate at the start. The form transcribed here treats it as a bracket: something opens at approval and has to be closed at the end, by the researcher, in writing, to the committee that approved it.
Two things follow immediately. First, the obligation is conditional on approval having been required — a project that needed no human-research approval owes no closure report under this wording. Second, where approval was required, closure is on the critical path of the degree, not after it. That places a task at the end of the schedule, and it is a task neither of the two worked thesis schedules in this library contains.
A caution about the worked example, stated plainly
The five things the report must provide
THE FIVE REQUIREMENTS, QUOTED FROM ONE INSTITUTION'S TEMPLATE (source requirement for that institution; derived count — the template states no total)
| What the template asks for | What you must have kept to answer it |
|---|---|
| "The main findings of the study." | A plain-language account of what the study found, written for a reader who is not your examiner. Short. It is a summary, not the thesis. |
| "Details of any deviations from or amendments to your approved protocol." | A running record of what changed against what was approved, when, and whether the change was itself approved. This is the field that cannot be reconstructed at the end from memory. |
| "Details of how the data/records are being maintained and stored." | Location, medium, retention period, access list and identifiability class — the four or five facts your participant information sheet already promised. |
| "Whether participants have been provided with a summary of the findings (as stated in the approved protocol)." | Knowledge of what your approved protocol promised, and a record of whether you delivered it. The question is phrased against the protocol, not against good intentions. |
| "Details of any adverse/harmful effects to participants." | An incident record, even when it is empty. A nil return is an answer; an absent record is not. |
The form itself is built in eight sections: reason for completing; project details; other researchers; project status and deviations; adverse effects; adverse-effects notification; certification; and a findings summary. Eight sections, five requirements, and the two lists are not the same list. The template does not map them onto each other, and nothing in the material explains the difference.
What a completed one looks like
This is the only completed research-ethics closure form anywhere in this library's material, and it belongs to a different project from the apparatus it was supplied with. It is worth reading anyway, because it shows the form working — including on the field most people would be tempted to leave blank.
THE COMPLETED INSTANCE — A DIFFERENT PROJECT'S ANSWERS (example only; not a standard and not this apparatus's project)
| Field | What that project answered |
|---|---|
| Deviations from the approved protocol | Yes, and the committee had not approved them. The stated deviation: "I had insufficient time to conduct questionnaire participant interviews. They received ethical approval, however did not proceed." |
| Adverse effects to participants | None. |
| Summary of findings provided to participants | N/A. |
| Data maintenance and storage | "A file has been provided to the Course Coordinator containing all the data relevant to this research project. The file is to be sent to [the university] for storage on a designated server, which is secure and backed up. It will be stored for five years." |
Quoted from a completed form belonging to a different project by a different researcher under a different protocol number. Used here as the library's only worked instance of the document type.
The deviation answer is the instructive one. An approved element of the design — participant interviews — was not carried out, and the form says so, unprompted, in a field that would have been easier to leave at "No". That is what the field is for. A protocol deviation reported at closure is an ordinary event; an unreported one is the thing the bracket exists to catch.
Building the answers while the project runs
Four of the five requirements are questions about records. None is difficult to keep and all are painful to reconstruct. The sequence below places them where they are cheap.
Six things to set up so that closure is a transcription job
At approval: copy the requirements into your plan
Paste your committee's requirement list into the project plan as a closing task, with the report itself as a deliverable. If your schedule has an ethics approval task, the closure report is its counterpart at the other end.
From day one: keep an amendment log
One line per change: what changed, the date, why, whether the committee was told, and whether it approved. A change of recruitment channel, an added question, a dropped interview strand — all of them are deviations, and none is remembered accurately six months later.
From first collection: keep a data register
Where each file lives, in what format, in what identifiability class, who may reach it, and the date retention expires. Your participant information sheet has already promised most of this to participants; the register is how you keep the promise.
Whatever the outcome: keep an incident record
Distress, withdrawal, a complaint, a data exposure — with dates and what you did. If nothing happens, the record is a dated line saying so, which is exactly what a nil return needs behind it.
At analysis: draft the participant summary
Write the plain-language findings summary while the results are fresh, not at closure. If your protocol promised participants a summary, this is the artefact that discharges it, and the closure form will ask whether it reached them.
After submission: diary the retention expiry
Retention has an end as well as a start. Put the expiry date in a calendar you will still be using, together with what is to happen to the files then.
What this document cannot tell you
- It is one institution's form. Committees differ in what they require and in when they require it. Read the wording attached to your own approval; do not carry these five items across as though they were a standard.
- Nothing states how the report is assessed, who reads it, or what follows from an answer of "yes" to adverse effects beyond the notification section on the form.
- Nothing states the deadline relative to submission, examination or graduation, beyond the fact that the grade is withheld until the report is in.
- The requirement list and the eight sections are never mapped onto each other by the template, and no reconciliation should be invented for them.
- No completion report exists for the project whose apparatus is otherwise complete, so this library has a template, one instance belonging to elsewhere, and no worked closure for a project it can trace end to end.
For what the approval process asks at the other end of the bracket, see seeking ethics clearance and ethics review and approval processes. For the promises made to participants that the closure report checks back against, see a participant information sheet, displayed. For the storage requirements the third field turns on, see research data storage, retention and ownership and steps 9-10: writing the report and storing the data.
What to carry forward
- Approval opens a bracket that a completion report closes. Under this institution's wording the grade is not released until it is filed — so it is a scheduled task, not an afterthought.
- Five requirements: main findings, protocol deviations, data maintenance and storage, whether participants received a summary, adverse effects. Check them separately from the form's eight sections.
- Four of the five are questions about records. An amendment log, a data register and an incident record cost minutes a month and cannot be reconstructed at the end.
- A reported deviation is an ordinary event. The one completed instance in this material reports an approved strand that did not proceed, unprompted, and that is the field working as intended.
- The five-year retention period is evidenced three times over from three independent documents here — the best-supported single requirement in this material, and still subject to whatever your own approval states.
- The completed example on this page belongs to a different project. Build on the template; treat the instance as illustration.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need a completion report if my project did not require ethics approval?
Under the wording transcribed here, no — the template notes that the condition applies only where the research required ethics approval. That makes it worth having, in writing, a statement that approval was not required for your design. None of the works in this library's examined corpus states that, and in a document an absence and an exemption look identical.
What counts as a deviation from the approved protocol?
Any difference between what you said you would do and what you did: a changed recruitment channel, an added or dropped question, a different sample, an abandoned strand, a different storage arrangement. The completed example here reports a whole interview strand that was approved and never ran. Report the difference and say whether the committee had approved it.
How do I answer the question about giving participants a summary of findings?
Against your approved protocol, not against your intentions. If the protocol or the information sheet promised a summary — on request or otherwise — the honest answer records whether it was provided. If no summary was promised, N/A is a legitimate answer, which is what the completed instance here records.
How long must research data be kept?
Three independent documents in this material give five years as a minimum, and the ethics teaching material records it as flowing from a national code. Your own approval will state the period that binds you, and some data types carry longer periods. Record the expiry date at the start; retention has an end as well as a beginning.
What should the findings summary in a completion report contain?
The template asks for the main findings of the study and nothing further. Write it in plain language for a reader who is not an examiner, and keep it to what the study established. The completion report is not the place to introduce claims the thesis did not make.
Why can't I rely on the completed example supplied with this project?
Because it belongs to a different project: a different researcher, a different protocol number, a different subject and different dates, with the other researcher recorded in its own file metadata. Its blank template is a sound statement of requirements. Its answers describe a study that is not the one it was supplied alongside.
References and source attribution
- A blank institutional research-ethics project completion report template, transcribed for its statement of what a closure report must provide. Committee, institution, degree and jurisdiction scrubbed. One institution's requirements, not a standard.
- A completed instance of that form, belonging to a different examined project by a different researcher under a different ethics protocol number; used here only as the library's single worked example of the document type, and labelled as such throughout.
- The participant information sheet of the examined project supplied alongside that form, which names a different protocol number and researcher and states a five-year retention period on a secure institutional server. Researcher, institution, server and contacts scrubbed.
- Two worked project schedules from two examined research projects, neither of which contains a closure task and one of which contains no ethics task at all.
- The supplied teaching source: weekly study notes, slide decks and assessment activities for a master's-level research methods subject in project management, including the ethics material that sets out an eight-part application structure and records a five-year minimum retention period drawn from a national code. Author, institution and year not stated in the supplied files.
Suggested questions for Ask KEVOS
- What has to go in a research ethics completion report?
- What counts as a deviation from an approved research protocol?
- How long do I have to keep my research data after submission?
- Do I need a completion report if my project did not need ethics approval?
- How do I keep an amendment log during a research project?
- What should I tell participants about my findings after the study ends?