Research Common

Did you know that if you’re using Microsoft Teams for an interview or focus group as part of a research project, any information posted in the chat will remain permanently stored in the Microsoft Cloud? This has important ethical implications for maintaining participant anonymity and data security.

With the growing shift toward digital research methods, researchers face new challenges in maintaining the integrity and security of their projects. From ensuring participant privacy to protecting data from breaches, it’s essential to plan for these risks early in the research lifecycle. While it might feel like “this won’t happen to me,” understanding the risks and taking proactive steps can help you minimize potential threats to your research and data security.

To support RDP researchers in navigating these unique challenges, the Research Ethics Board, Research Common, and IT Services are releasing a new information sheet titled Virtual Tools for Conducting Research.

The information sheet outlines potential risks identified by the Government of Canada’s Safeguarding Your Research website, offers tips for using online tools at each stage of the research lifecycle, and provides recommendations from the Research Ethics Board to help you safeguard your research and protect participant privacy.

When conducting research remotely (i.e., outside of institutional firewalls and/or physical security protections), researchers must take additional caution to protect participants' privacy, confidentiality, and data security (also ensuring to follow institutional policy). 

Become familiar with all features of selected online platforms and ensure to set up data collection in a way that mitigates any privacy, confidentiality or data security risks. 

Ensure any technological platforms being used have been recommended by Red Deer Polytech and the REB. NOTE: Microsoft Teams is the preferred platforms for secure remote communication. 

There are a variety of tools available for creating online surveys. Red Deer Polytechnic endorses no particular online survey tool; however, it is important for you to know that if the tool is owned by an American company (e.g. Survey Monkey, Google Docs), then you need to advise your survey participants appropriately of the possible risks to confidentiality or anonymity. Online survey tools that are owned by American companies are subject to U.S. laws, in particular the U.S. Patriot Act, which allows authorities access to the records of internet service providers. 

Unless you indicate otherwise when constructing your survey, a U.S.-based company's servers will record incoming IP addresses, including those of the computers that participants use to access the survey. You are advised to set up your survey to collect anonymous responses. The procedure for this depends on the type of collector/s you use:

1. If you use a Web Link collector (or any other collector), you may choose to configure it to not collect IP addresses.
2. If you use the Email Invitation collector, you may choose to configure it to not save the email addresses (in the Analyze section) and not to collect IP addresses.

If you choose to use a U.S.-based survey tool, the Research Ethics Board recommends you include a statement informing your participants.

If you choose to investigate a Canadian-based survey tool, the following links may be helpful:

• Hosted in Canada Surveys
• Interceptum
• Jitsutech
• Simple Survey

Red Deer Polytechnic's Research Common does have a limited number of accounts with a Canadian-based survey tool available for student and faculty use (first priority is given to students). Please contact the ResearchCommon@rdpolytech.ca for more information.