[Air-L] [SPAM: 7.500] Ethical approval for online data collection?

[Sue Tait]

Tomas - can you please provide a little more detail on the project you
imagine? Are you actually intending to collect data from facebook profiles,
or submit surveys, or is your project concerned with the development of
applications that would enable these forms of data generation? If the answer
is the former, then of course you need to go through the ethics process.
Ethics committees don't know much about emergent technologies and methods,
but they make it hard for you because their intention is to protect the
human subjects you intend working with. Try and see the process as something
you can learn from too - conducting research that is ethical should be our
primary consideration.


On 11/20/07 10:42 PM, "Tomas Lin" <tomaslin at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi everyone,
> 
> I am starting a research project that tries to explore the potential
> of data collection and online surveys through Facebook Applications.
> 
> Given that this is an independent project not founded by my university
> and not attached to any faculty member, should I go through the ethics
> process of getting approval and ethical review? How would this affect
> the validity and publishing potential of this data?
> 
> There are already applications on Facebook that claim in their terms
> of services "This data could be shared with interested third parties".
> And I think my application is no different. What would be the
> advantages of getting ethics forms approved for this type of research?
> Do journals look down on data that is not obtained through traditional
> academic routes?
> 
> I am concerned that since ethics review boards do not understand the
> nature of this technology, and there are many dimensions of this
> exploratory study that simply do not conform to the information being
> required in forms from ethics boards. I am also concerned about many
> of the potential limitations that will be placed on this research
> project from ethics.
> 
> Any guidance will be appreciated,
> 
> Thank you,
> 
> Tomas
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