ERIC Identifier: ED470201
Publication Date: 2002-07-00
Author: Brem, Sarah K.
Source: ERIC Clearinghouse on
Assessment and Evaluation College Park MD.
Some Ethical Considerations and Resources for Analyzing Online
Discussions. ERIC Digest.
Online discussions can be a valuable source of information for researchers
and educators studying the interactions of a community of interest (Klinger,
2000), looking for ways to improve interactions within a working group (Ahuja
& Carley,1998), or assessing student learning (Brem, Russell, &
Weems,2001). Discussion forums frequently offer automated tracking services,
such as a transcript or an archive, that allow detailed analyses of
conversations that may have taken place months or even years ago. While online
discussions present new opportunities to teachers, policymakers, and
researchers, their analysis also presents new concerns and considerations. This
Digest introduces ethical considerations related to acquiring and analyzing
online data and provides resources to support sound practice.
ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS
Because online conversation is
relatively new and unfamiliar, and takes place at a distance, it is relatively
easy to overlook possible ethical violations. People may not realize that their
conversations could be made public, may not realize that they are being
monitored, or may forget that they are being monitored because the observer's
presence is virtual and unobtrusive. Some participants may feel relatively
invulnerable because of the distance and relative anonymity of online exchanges
and may use these protections to harass other participants. Researchers working
with online exchanges of information must provide the same levels of protection
as they would in the case of face-to-face exchanges, including clearance with an
institutional review board, privacy and confidentiality assurances, and informed
consent.
INSTITUTIONAL REVIEW BOARD
A researcher affiliated with a
university or similar institution requires the approval of an institutional
review board (IRB) created for the protection of human beings who participate in
studies. Teacher-researchers and others who do not have an IRB and are not
associated with any such institution should nevertheless follow ethical
principles and guidelines such as those laid out in The Belmont Report.
available at <http://ohsr.od.nih.gov/mpa/belmont.php3>. Other useful
resources include Sales and Folkman (2000), and NIH ethics resources at
<http://www.nih.gov/sigs/bioethics/researchethics.html>.
PUBLIC DOMAIN CONVERSATIONS
The least problematic
conversations are those that take place entirely in the public domain; people
know they are publishing to a public area with unrestricted viewing, as if they
were writing a letter to the editor. Newsgroups are an example of such exchanges
anyone with web access can access conversation from the past twenty years. In
many cases, this sort of research is considered "exempt" under federal
guidelines for the protection of human subjects; for researchers at institutions
with an IRB, the board must confirm this status. Still, even public areas may
contain sensitive information that the user inadvertently provided; novices are
especially prone to accidentally giving out personal information or including
personal information without considering possible misuse. In addition to the
usual procedures for anonymizing data (e.g., removing names, addresses, etc.),
there are some additional concerns to address. Every post must be scoured for
both intentional and unintentional indicators of identity. Here are some common
ways that anonymity is compromised:
* Usernames like "tiger1000" do not provide anonymity;
people who are active online are as well known by their
usernames as their traditional names. Usernames must be
replaced with identifiers that provide no link to the actual
participant
* Be vigilant in removing a participant's signature file
appended to a post and any other quotes, graphics, and
other idiosyncratic inclusions that are readily identifiable
as belonging to a particular individual.
* Identifying information is often embedded in a post
through quoting; for example, if I were quoted by another
participant, my email address might be embedded in the
middle of his or her message as "tiger1000
(<mailto:sarah.brem@asu.edu>) posted on 1 February 2002, 11:15."
PRIVILEGED COMMUNICATIONS
If a domain establishes any
degree of privacy through membership, registration, passwords, etc., or if a
researcher wishes to contact participants directly, then the communications
should be considered privileged to some degree. In addition to the safeguards
required for public domain data, using these conversations in research requires
at very least the informed consent of all participants whose work will be
included in the analysis, with explicit description of how confidentiality
and/or anonymity will be ensured. the procedures for informed consent,
recruitment, and data collection will require "expedited" or "full" review by an
institutional review board. Once approval has been given, consent forms will
have to be distributed to every participant, and only the contributions of
consenting members can be stored and analyzed.
ON-LINE DATA COLLECTION
If a researcher sets up a site for
collecting data, regardless of how much privacy and anonymity promised, he or
she is ethically bound to inform all potential participants that their
contributions will be used as data in research. One example of how to provide
this information has been implemented by the Public Knowledge Project. To see
how they obtained consent, visit <http://www.pkp.ubc.ca/bctf/terms.html>.
Likewise, if participants are to be contacted directly, a researcher needs to
make their rights clear and obtain their permission to use the information they
provide for research purposes before engaging in any conversation with them.
In addition to preserving the safety and comfort of participants, researchers
must also consider their intellectual property rights. All postings are
automatically copyrighted under U.S. and international laws. Extended quotes
could violate copyright laws, so quoting should be limited, or permission should
be obtained from the author prior to publication. For more about U.S. and
international laws, visit
<http://www.law.cornell.edu/topics/copyright.html>.
COMPARISONS WITH FACE-TO FACE RESEARCH
Online research is
similar, but not identical to, face-to-face (f2f) research. With online
research, participants in a conversation may not know at what point they are
being monitored, or, because the monitoring is so unobtrusive, they may forget
about it; in f2f research, participants are aware of the research setting. In
f2f interactions, researchers can examine body language and intonation as well
as the words spoken; in an online interaction, researchers have to look beyond
the words written to the electronic equivalents of gestures and social
conventions (e.g., "emoticons" such as :-) for smiling or using all capital
letters as the equivalent of shouting).
Instead of collecting data using audio and video recording as in f2f
conversations, researchers interested in preserving online conversations require
ways to download or track the electronic files in which the information is
stored. They must then analyze the data, just as those conducting f2f research
do.
Common approaches to data analysis of online discussions include grounded
theory, quantifying techniques, experimental manipulations, and ethnography. For
information about analyzing discourse, see Stemler (2001); techniques and
considerations that are specific to online discourse can be found in the 1997
special issue of The Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, "Studying the
Net."). Information about tools for theory-based data manipulation is available
at:
<http://kerlins.net/bobbi/research/qualresearch/researchware.html>
and
<http://directory.google.com/Top/Science/Social_Sciences/Methodolo
gy/ Qualitative/Tools/>.
FINAL THOUGHTS
The study of online discourse is still quite
new, and there is much about the treatment and analysis of these data that has
not yet been addressed. When faced with a situation for which there is no
standard procedure, the best course of action is to begin with established
techniques and then adapt these to the online environment. Researchers should
have a rationale for any adaptations or deviations they decide to make in order
to establish credibility with editors and peers and allow others to adopt,
recycle, and refine their approach.
REFERENCES
Ahuja, M.K., & Carley, K.M. (1998). Network
structure in virtual organizations. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication,
3 (4). Available online:
<http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/vol3/issue4/ahuja.html>
Brem, S.K., Russell, J., & Weems, L. (2001). Science on the Web: Student
evaluations of scientific arguments. Discourse Processes, 32, 191-213. Available
online: <http://www.public.asu.edu/~sbrem/docs/BremRussellWeems.webversion.h
tm>.
Klinger, S. (2000). "Are they talking yet?": Online discourse as political
action. Paper presented at the Participatory Design Conference, CUNY, New York.
Available online: <http://www.pkp.ubc.ca/publications/talkingyet.doc>.
Sales, B.D., & Folkman, S. (2000). Ethics in research with human
participants. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Stemler, Steve (2001). An overview of content analysis. Practical Assessment,
Research & Evaluation, 7(17). Available online:
<http://ericae.net/pare/getvn.asp?v=7&n=17>.
