[Air-l] secure servers and/or encryption for surveys?

[Mark D. Johns]

At 12:12 PM 3/21/2004 -0600, you wrote:
>I was struck by a recent message to the list asking for volunteers for a 
>web-based survey in which seemingly half the message consisted of warnings 
>about the insecurity of web-based survey responses.  Does anyone have 
>experience with using the security techniques so familiar from e-commerce 
>to ensure those participating in web-based research of 
>confidentiality?  Anyone know how widespread this practice is?

Such security measures can be used, but often the warnings and disclaimers 
are required by institutional review boards (IRBs) regardless of the 
security put in place.  This comes from paranoia about the technology, 
media stories about the work of various hackers, and the general fear of 
lawsuits should the unlikely happen.  Let's face it, most of us aren't 
doing research that is of such great interest to the public beyond academia 
that there would be great value in hacking the data.  But IRBs are becoming 
increasingly protective at many institutions.

------
Mark D. Johns, Ph.D.
Asst. Professor of Communication/Linguistics,
Luther College, Decorah, Iowa
http://faculty.luther.edu/~johnsmar/
-----------------------------------------------
"Get the facts first. You can distort them later."
     ---Mark Twain