Colloquium with Alexandra Bendixen
The Leibniz Institute for Psychology (ZPID) cordially invites you to attend our next colloquium in our lecture series. On Wednesday, August 12, 2026, from 14:00 to 15:00. Our guest is Prof. Dr. Alexandra Bendixen, TU Chemnitz. Her talk will be titled "Ethics in human-participant research - the open-source Ethiktool software".
The colloquium will be held in English at the Leibniz Institute for Psychology (ZPID) at the Trier University (Building D, Room D 141, Universitätsring 15, 54296, Trier) and also online. If you want to attend the colloquium online, please email us at madr@leibniz-psychology.org and we will send you the link to the online event. You don’t need to register to attend in person.
Abstract
Research involving human participants is usually preceded by ethics review. In a project with team members at TU Chemnitz, at the Leibniz Institute for Psychology (ZPID) and at Bielefeld University, we have developed the open-source software "Ethiktool” (https://ethiktool.org) to support the preparation of human-participant studies for ethics review. Our aim is to simplify the process both for the applicants submitting their planned research for ethics review, and for the ethics review board members - allowing both sides to focus more strongly on ethical reflection. The Ethiktool provides guidance through all ethically relevant aspects, using context-sensitive questions, adaptive hints for the applicant, and automatic consistency checks. It generates the ethics application form and all participant documents (information and consent forms, data privacy statement, debriefing if applicable). When all information is complete and consistent, the documents can be submitted to the ethics review board. In the talk, I will demonstrate the Ethiktool software, show data from our usability studies in the field and in the lab, and illustrate how the evaluations contribute to continuous improvement of the software.