[Air-l] Re: internet research and confidentiality

Michele H Jackson Michele.Jackson at colorado.edu
Tue Dec 21 10:35:40 PST 2004


Hi - About a year ago, I polled list members about this and received great
answers, most of which are included in the ethics guideline Mark Johns pointed
to.  HOWEVER, we found that our IRB here at CU was not very well educated on
online communication and interaction, so I would add two things:  (1) be very
explicit in describing what the data are, and use layperson's language.  (2)
work from your institutions PI Handbook/Guidelines for "exempt" research.
Publicly available discourse/public discourse is "exempt" (for example,
rhetoricians who study political speeches don't have to change the name of the
politicians they are studying).  We were able to get exempt approval (which
usually does not require informed consent and may not require confidentiality)
by making clear that we were analyzing publicly available *texts.*

Good luck - 
mj

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