which of the following researchers must follow the tcps 2

TCPS 2 (the Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans) must be followed by any researcher conducting research involving human participants under the jurisdiction of a Canadian institution that is subject to the Tri‑Council agencies.

Core idea in simple terms

If a project:

• Involves living human participants or their data/biological materials, and
• Is conducted at, through, or under the auspices of a Canadian institution that follows TCPS 2 (universities, colleges, hospitals, research institutes that receive Tri‑Council funding),

then the researcher must follow TCPS 2.

Who must follow TCPS 2

In practice, TCPS 2 applies to:

• University or college professors doing studies with human participants (surveys, interviews, experiments, clinical trials, focus groups, classroom-based research involving students, etc.).

• Graduate and undergraduate students doing theses, capstone projects, or course-based research with human participants at these institutions.

• Hospital or health‑system researchers affiliated with a Canadian university or hospital that uses TCPS 2 for its Research Ethics Board (REB).

• Any staff member, clinician, or investigator whose project involving humans requires review by an institutional REB that is mandated to apply TCPS 2.

TCPS 2 specifically states that its ethics guidance is “applicable to all research involving human participants, regardless of discipline or methodology.”

Who usually does not have to follow TCPS 2 (formally)

These activities are often outside the formal scope of TCPS 2, although institutions may still expect ethical conduct:

• Quality assurance / quality improvement or program evaluation within an organization when the main intent is internal improvement and not “research” aimed at generalizable knowledge (these can be judged case‑by‑case by REBs).

• Journalists, writers, or independent consultants not working under a TCPS‑bound institution and not seeking Tri‑Council–related ethics approval.

• Research that does not involve human participants at all (e.g., purely theoretical work, some secondary analyses of fully anonymized data when individuals are not identifiable).

However, many Canadian universities state that “all research involving human participants” that they oversee must comply with TCPS 2 and receive REB clearance, regardless of funding source.

If your question is a multiple‑choice exam item

Exam or quiz questions like “Which of the following researchers must follow the TCPS 2?” typically want the option that describes:

• A researcher at a Canadian university/college/hospital,
• Conducting research that involves human participants or their identifiable information,
• For purposes of creating generalizable knowledge (e.g., thesis, funded project, publication).

So, if your answer choices include, for example:

• “A professor at a Canadian university surveying students about mental health,”
• “A nurse at a Canadian hospital running a clinical trial with patients,”
• “A Canadian graduate student interviewing community members for a thesis,”

those are the kinds of researchers who must follow TCPS 2, while someone doing internal quality improvement only, or a non‑academic blogger doing informal polls, typically would not be the required one in such a question.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.