I received an encouraging and empowering email from the Ethics Committee at LST today, thanking me for my submission. My research proposal has now been officially approved! Their first point of feedback was:
“The REC is grateful for the high quality of the documentation prepared and presented.”
That just makes a researcher feel good. I'll take affirmation wherever I can get it. They had some minor changes they asked me to make (to be more clear about adopting a Research Code of Practice, and about how long research data will be kept), but indicated that the proposal did not need to be seen again by the REC. This is my green light to go ahead with the actual, empirical research part of my project!