Conducting Research in
Digital Spaces
Technology, Design, and Ethical Implications
Objectives
 Explore tools for doing research in online spaces and with
digital populations
 Discuss issues related to doing research in these places,
especially those related to human subjects protection
Luke explores Facebook®
Luke, a graduate student in a psychology department is interested in
examining the types of information posted on Facebook® by
individuals about their relationship status and the correlation of that
status with the amount of photos they post to their page of
themselves with the partner listed as “being in a relationship” with.
Luke believes that individuals who link their profiles together through
relationship status will post more pictures of each other than those
who do not and feels that this will help to examine the role that social
networking plays in dating/marriage/etc.
Luke knows that the larger his sample-size the better and that he has
at least 600 friends on Facebook®. Additionally, he knows that many
of the people who belong to Facebook® but are not his friends have
profiles that lack privacy settings and since he is a member he can
easily view their profiles to get the information he is interested in
studying. Luke plans to conduct a review of the profiles of all of his
friends in addition to another 200-300 profiles that are not privacy
protected so that his sample will be larger and he can introduce some
randomization. Luke does not plan to include any individual
identifying information from the individuals whose profiles he reviews.
He will be presenting the results to his fellow graduate students and
would like to eventually submit his research for publication if the study
becomes his graduate thesis.
Luke explores Facebook® discussion
 What are the ethical concerns/violations raised in this
scenario?
 Since no identifying information is being collected or
reported is Luke’s study exempt from IRB approval?
 To conduct this study does informed consent need to be
obtained?
 Is the data obtained from this study reliable and further can
this data be published?
Ethics in the digital realm
 How are we protecting human subjects? How is digital
research different?
 IRB – Belmont Report -> Code of Federal Regulations Title 45,
Part 46, Protection of Human Subjects
 Upholding an individual’s right to autonomy, beneficence,
justice
 Leading us to estimate benefits/risks ratio, obtain informed
consent, and secure privacy/confidentiality
 With internet research, same principles need to be upheld,
BUT more complexities arise…
Three categories of ethical dilemmas
Distinctions become blurred once we enter the digital realm
 Public vs. Private
 What is public/private online?
 Reasonable expectations of privacy
 Published vs. Unpublished
 What is considered published in online spaces?
 Anonymous vs. Identified
 Can participants truly remain anonymous?
Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/afc-championship-ravens-upset-patriots-28-13-to-moveon-to-super-bowl/2013/01/20/6b4abb5e-6370-11e2-85f5-a8a9228e55e7_allComments.html?ctab=all_&
USA Today: http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/business/2013/01/31/unemployment-claims/1879791/
Terms of Service (ToS)
 World of Warcraft: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/
Recruitment, data collection, & storage
 Thinking about tech affordances and IRB considerations
 Will be looking at three areas:
 Recruitment
 Data collection
 Data storage
Recruitment: Digital participants
 Tools for digital participant data & finding participants
 Forums / message boards
 Web chats
 Websites, comments, blogs
 Social networks
 Facebook, Twitter, specialty networks, digital games,
 Emails
 Pre-existing participant pools:
 Amazon MechanicalTurk (mturk.com); SocialSci (socialsci.com)
 Promotion
 News sites, blogs
 direct communications (opt in, of course!): SMS texts, mailing lists
Case: Recruitment
 Studying discussions on Facebook timelines.
 What are the expectations of users/participants?
 How do you appear to participants?
 What are the terms of service of the platforms you’re using?
 How do we ensure that we are working with particular
populations or groups? Hint: never 100% sure, just like in nondigital research!
 Keep in mind: participants may be recruited from different nations
–different reasonable expectations of privacy and more stringent IRB
policies
 Any other questions?
Data collection: Where to start?
 Tools
 Task distribution: MechanicalTurk
 Great for people tasks that can be planned: experiments, surveys
 Survey tools: SurveyMonkey, SurveyGizmo, Qualtrics, SocialSci
 Manual capture of data (printouts; make pdfs, Excel files)
 Automated data capture: interactions
 Google Analytics
 Website / app log files
 Mobile & web apps (getting cheaper to develop, lots of templates)
 Use for personalized interaction with subjects via mobile devices & the
web, can be connected to a variety of activities
 What kind of questions arise with data collection?
Case: Data Collection via MTurk
 Some questions
 How do you capture data reliably and within expectation of
privacy?
 Usability and quality of interface: how easy is it for people to do
what you want them to do?
 Do participants have the skills and directions to complete
intended tasks?
 What counts as personally identifiable information?
 The usual suspects
 Digital fingerprint
 “string of text” searches? (Google never forgets)
Storage: Fidelity and security
 Tools
 Cloud-based, or via Internet servers at a distance accessible via the
web
 Dropbox, Google Drive, Box
 Security is key (multiple devices hooked up to accounts)
 “Local” based, or on-site
 Laptops/desktops
 External hard drives/flash drives/CD-DVD
 Data collection services
 Don’t forget: if you use data collection services, your data likely stays
with them!
 Who has access to accounts?
Storage: Fidelity and security
 Questions to consider:
 Fidelity / reliability of data
 Backups and trust of online sources
 Security of data
 Encryption, password-protected
 Connected to a network – who possibly can get access? (might
require some research!)
 IRB Appendix M: Data Security Management Plan
 Is there any personally identifiable information?
Takeaway Points
 Online research – blurred ethical lines
 Three ethical dilemmas: public, published, and anonymity
 Three areas of research to consider:
 Recruitment
 Data collection
 Data storage
 Tech mediation is a powerful new mediator of research, but
its mediation likely comes with terms of service!
Thank you for coming!
 FACT services
 Upcoming PD offerings
 Resources to watch for
 Contact us!
 factuic.org
 Jeremy Riel, jriel2@uic.edu
 Kamilla Brodonowiska, kbrodo1@uic.edu