Recommendations for Effective & Ethical Passive Data Management
Here are opening statements from a discussion on research ethics and privacy at Online Research Methods in London this morning. (Quotes should be considered paraphrases.)
Arno Hummerston of Nurago: “Two main things that worry me: the first one is cookie legislation. I’m flabbergasted with how little people seem to be taking cookie legislation seriously, and I don’t see or hear anything about it, especially in the research industry. I did a straw poll in my company and got a resounding silence on the impact for research. Its unbelievable to me that people aren’t worrying about it. This legislation will mean you can’t use cookies across web sites, which means research won’t know if someone is taking a survey on a different site. It mandates opt in, and it will have a huge negative impact for advertising tracking. The second area that really worries me is that we have so many companies in the industry that seem to be playing fast and loose on privacy. We at our company observe how people use the Internet with their permission, but we are competing with companies tracking people without their consent. What worries me is that the press will get ahold of what other people do and that will taint what I do. TNS Gallup last year is where the press crucified the industry for no good reason. There are good reasons for them to crucify us that they haven’t found out about yet.”
Barry Ryan of MRS: “In the real world, ideas of consent and transparency and voluntary participation are easily observed when getting people to take surveys. But online people leave their moral compasses at the door, for some reason: for instance, researchers passing themselves off as patients on sites such as Patients Like Me. People would never do that in real life but because they can do it online they do. The law applies in ways that are unexpected online. We don’t inhabit a world of data (assuming this is not the Matrix and I’m not a brain in a jar!). In the real world, when we use observation, counting people in and counting people out, we do that without worry. In the Matrix, everything is data: when you see someone, you are not seeing someone, you are processing their personal data. So issues of ‘what is personal data’ become important. You can connect much online activity to real people. When monitoring online or collecting online you have to think about what information you are collecting, how long do you want to hold that data, can you remove people who want to be removed from your data set, and so on.”
Tom Ewing of Brainjuicer: “Having moved from a job that was more theoretical to one that is more client facing, what worries me practically speaking is when researchers are on a deadline, how do our guidelines carry over into the mindset of getting things done: what can we do, what can’t we do? Given this, how do we educate researchers? Pragmatically what are the ramifications for us of not observing the rules? Passive observation is a way to go instead of self-reported data for better quality on certain issues. We can’t let these concerns freeze our ability to innovate.”
