[Air-l] Research question: interviewing online subjects?

[Amy S. Bruckman]

Our informed consent template is here:
http://www.compliance.gatech.edu/IRB/informed.shtml

The old version used to say something like (paraphrasing) "We will
keep records confidential.  However, you should be aware that research
records can be obtained by a court subpoena."  Interestingly, I don't
see it in the current template.  I'm not sure when they took that out
or why.

How much you warn folks about stuff like this depends on the details
of the study.  There are definitely situations where this is
important.  Clearly my friend at CDC who is studying risky health
behaviors among gay men meeting eachother in chatrooms needs a
different level of precaution than someone studying ad-hominem attacks
on the AoIR list, for example.  ;-)

This paper might be of interest: "Studying the Amateur Artist:
A Perspective on Disguising Data Collected in Human Subjects Research on
the Internet", http://www.nyu.edu/projects/nissenbaum/ethics_bru_full.html

Internet research ethics is HARD.  And fascinating.  Getting mad at your
IRB is not constructive.  It's your job to build a positive and gracious
relationship with them, and do your best to educate them on the
subtlety of the issues.  Square one is making sure they know that you
take this stuff seriously and recognize that IRB oversite is important
and you appreciate all the mostly thankless hard work they do.  Step
two is investing the time to have a detailed conversation about the details,
providing published references as appropriate.

YMMV,

Amy


Amy Bruckman
Associate Professor
College of Computing
Georgia Institute of Technology
Atlanta, GA  30332-0760

Tel: 	404-894-9222
Fax: 	404-894-3146
Email: 	asb at cc.gatech.edu
Web:	http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~asb/