AMI Corpus - Ethics and Consent Forms

The ethical procedures for European research projects are different from those in the United States, and in particular, there is no one entity called an "Internal Review Board". The European Commission reviews the ethics for proposed projects using their own procedures, and they did this for AMI, the project under which the AMI Meeting Corpus was collected. Their procedure involves a ticklist form at the proposal stage that determines the issues to be discussed, with verbal questioning at hearing and reviews that results in clauses to safeguard ethics being placed in the "technical annexes", or contracts, governing the work.

Two documents may be of use to American researchers needing to show that the corpus data had the equivalent of IRB approval. The first is the section of the original contract regarding ethics, and the second is a blank copy of the consent form signed by the participants.