scholarly journals Just Because the Data Is There, It Doesn’t Mean It’s Yours to Take

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-61
Author(s):  
Kate McCandless
Keyword(s):  
Informed Consent ◽  
Literature Review ◽  
Research Ethics ◽  
Private Information ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Back Seat ◽  
Twitter Data ◽  
Research Ethics Boards ◽  
The University ◽  
Data Informed

In research conducted using Twitter data, informed consent has taken the back seat. This literature review examines the perspectives of users, researchers and research ethics boards to provide nuance and context to the issue. Users are generally unaware that their data can be taken for research purposes and that they have agreed to be studied within the platform’s terms of service. This is concerning for both researchers and users alike, as it continues to blur the line of public and private information. Users want to be informed when they are being studied. When informed consent is not obtained, researchers are not respecting the data and the humans who created it. If researchers were required to obtain informed consent when engaging with Twitter data, the resulting research would be more ethical and protect everyone involved: the researcher, the user, and the university.

Uneasy Relations: Crime Ethnographies and Research Ethics

2021 ◽  
pp. 39-59
Author(s):  
Kevin D. Haggerty
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Informed Consent ◽  
Research Ethics ◽  
Criminal Behavior ◽  
Review Process ◽  
Ethical Conduct ◽  
Ethics Framework ◽  
The Past ◽  
Ethics Review ◽  
Research Ethics Boards

This chapter accentuates some of the reasons why crime ethnographies can face difficulties with the ethics review process, including prominent issues relating to informed consent, risk and harm, anonymity, and criminal behavior. Universities in most Western countries have established research ethics boards over the past twenty years responsible for assessing the ethical conduct of research. Qualitative research can fit poorly into the largely positivist ethics framework, resulting in an often-frustrating situation for ethnographers seeking to move ahead with their research. One paradox of this situation is that the ethics process itself seems poised to give rise to a subset of academic deviants in the form of crime ethnographers who may find that they are obliged to circumvent or disregard some formal ethical strictures in order to engage in ethnographic practices that otherwise seem uncontroversial or even innocuous.

What If You Meet Face to Face? A Case Study in Virtual/Material Research Ethics

2004 ◽  
pp. 246-261 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Clark
Keyword(s):  
Informed Consent ◽  
Research Ethics ◽  
Material Research ◽  
Online Research ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Strict Interpretation

In this chapter, the author argues for a strict interpretation of research ethics when conducting online research, and in the process, discusses these four ethical categories: the presence of the researcher in the researched context, the blurring lines between “public” and “private,” informed consent and confidentiality. In making his argument, he draws on examples from a case study in which he examined an organization that meets both online and face-to-face.

scholarly journals Controversies between regulations of research ethics and protection of personal data: informed consent at a cross-road

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eugenijus Gefenas ◽  
J. Lekstutiene ◽  
V. Lukaseviciene ◽  
M. Hartlev ◽  
M. Mourby ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Informed Consent ◽  
Research Ethics ◽  
Personal Data ◽  
Data Informed

scholarly journals Seven Snags of Research Ethics on the Qualitative Research Voyage

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (6) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
MacDonald Kanyangale
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Informed Consent ◽  
Research Ethics ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Qualitative Inquiry ◽  
Ethical Guidelines ◽  
Ethical Approval ◽  
Conceptual Paper ◽  
Research Students ◽  
The University

Responsible researchers with ethically sound research skills are fundamental to success in an ever-changing business and social world. Embedding ethics into research by students seems to be intuitively easy given tight, standardized ethical guidelines and rigorous ethical approval process in the university. In reality, there are Masters and PhD research students who feel ill-prepared when they encounter ethical ambiguities and complexities in the field which are unique, beyond what they had foreseen at the outset of a qualitative inquiry or were prescribed, advised and forewarned by a research ethics committee (REC). The aim of this conceptual paper is to discuss seven pitfalls of research ethics in a qualitative research voyage in order to educate and sensitize current and prospective research students. The seven pitfalls are: (1) complexity and ambiguity of informed consent; (2) embedding informed consent as a process rather than an event; (3) navigating the moral conundrum of unintentional disclosure; (4) dealing with deductive disclosure; (5) dialectic between participant`s desire for recognition and greater confidentiality; (6) researcher role conflict and (7) difficulty of embedding researcher reflexivity. The paper concludes that only research students who are ethically literate and actively reflexive in the entire research process are more likely to know whenever they encounter ethical pitfalls, deal with them properly; and ultimately entrench relevant skills to conduct ethically sound research. Highlighted are implications for research educators to develop research competence of current and future researchers. Responsible researchers with ethically sound research skills are fundamental to success in an ever-changing business and social world. Embedding ethics into research by students seems to be intuitively easy given tight, standardized ethical guidelines and rigorous ethical approval process in the university. In reality, there are Masters and PhD research students who feel ill-prepared when they encounter ethical ambiguities and complexities in the field which are unique, beyond what they had foreseen at the outset of a qualitative inquiry or were prescribed, advised and forewarned by a research ethics committee (REC). The aim of this conceptual paper is to discuss seven pitfalls of research ethics in a qualitative research voyage in order to educate and sensitize current and prospective research students. The seven pitfalls are: (1) complexity and ambiguity of informed consent; (2) embedding informed consent as a process rather than an event; (3) navigating the moral conundrum of unintentional disclosure; (4) dealing with deductive disclosure; (5) dialectic between participant`s desire for recognition and greater confidentiality; (6) researcher role conflict and (7) difficulty of embedding researcher reflexivity. The paper concludes that only research students who are ethically literate and actively reflexive in the entire research process are more likely to know whenever they encounter ethical pitfalls, deal with them properly; and ultimately entrench relevant skills to conduct ethically sound research. Highlighted are implications for research educators to develop research competence of current and future researchers.

The Economy of Social Data: Exploring Research Ethics as Device

2011 ◽  
Vol 59 (2_suppl) ◽  
pp. 113-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ana Gross
Keyword(s):  
Informed Consent ◽  
Research Ethics ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Social Data ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Regulatory Frameworks ◽  
Data Controller ◽  
Singular Data ◽  
Data Informed ◽  
Data Subject

The following article argues that research ethics and data regulatory frameworks can be understood as devices that articulate a particular kind of social data economy. Following Waldby and Mitchell's (2006) work on biological material economies it explores how social research ethics and data regulatory frameworks in the United Kingdom, organized around the notions of informed consent and anonymization, have favoured a model in which privacy is disentangled from the human agency to which it makes reference in order to be converted and objectified as data. Informed consent and anonymization are hence here analysed as devices which enable the circulation, exchange and valuation of data, or in other words, as devices which enable the conversion of privacy into property. In particular, the paper argues that informed consent enacts a legitimate transaction between data subject and data controller and can be therefore understood as a surrogate property contract. On the other hand, anonymization, which works by suppressing the author function, renders singular data units commensurable and aggregatable in the form of databases, a procedure which supports the emergence of a specific set of property rights. Finally, the conclusion critically addresses the work of ethics as a device as new datascapes organized by the principle of traceability produce ‘the human’ as disaggregated and distributed.

scholarly journals Linking Survey and Twitter Data: Informed Consent, Disclosure, Security, and Archiving

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 63-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luke Sloan ◽  
Curtis Jessop ◽  
Tarek Al Baghal ◽  
Matthew Williams
Keyword(s):  
Informed Consent ◽  
Linked Data ◽  
Data Linkage ◽  
Ethical Practice ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
Twitter Data ◽  
Scientific Analysis ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Data Informed ◽  
Essential Prerequisite

Linked survey and Twitter data present an unprecedented opportunity for social scientific analysis, but the ethical implications for such work are complex—requiring a deeper understanding of the nature and composition of Twitter data to fully appreciate the risks of disclosure and harm to participants. In this article, we draw on our experience of three recent linked data studies, briefly discussing the background research on data linkage and the complications around ensuring informed consent. Particular attention is paid to the vast array of data available from Twitter and in what manner it might be disclosive. In light of this, the issues of maintaining security, minimizing risk, archiving, and reuse are applied to linked Twitter and survey data. In conclusion, we reflect on how our ability to collect and work with Twitter data has outpaced our technical understandings of how the data are constituted and observe that understanding one’s data is an essential prerequisite for ensuring best ethical practice.

The Public and Private Information Sources of Volatility

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Opschoor ◽  
Michel van der Wel ◽  
Dick J. C. van Dijk ◽  
Nicholas Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Private Information ◽  
Information Sources ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
The Public

Ethics in Social Research

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steve Bruce
Keyword(s):  
Informed Consent ◽  
Data Collection ◽  
Research Ethics ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Medical Interventions ◽  
Ethical Implications ◽  
Social Researcher ◽  
Naturally Occurring ◽  
The Social ◽  
Collection Phase

It is right that social researchers consider the ethical implications of their work, but discussion of research ethics has been distorted by the primacy of the ‘informed consent’ model for policing medical interventions. It is remarkably rare for the data collection phase of social research to be in any sense harmful, and in most cases seeking consent from, say, members of a church congregation would disrupt the naturally occurring phenomena we wish to study. More relevant is the way we report our research. It is in the disparity between how people would like to see themselves described and explained and how the social researcher describes and explains them that we find the greatest potential for ill-feeling, and even here it is slight.

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