1. Data Management Ethical considerations for educational research
ETHICS 5
Data Management
Ethical considerations for educational research
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2. Aims
This presentation considers ethical issues surrounding the management of your research data.
In particular it focuses on three important issues, anonymity, confidentiality and data storage.
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3. 1. The ethical considerations of data management.
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4. All research and enquiry involves dealing with data.
This data can take many different forms eg the results of surveys, observations or interviews.
Managing your research data in an ethical manner is crucial to the research process.
In particular, ensuring that you consider how best to create, store, protect, share and preserve your data is essential.
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5. 2. Key considerations
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6. Research practices must ensure that research data and records are:
Accurate, complete, authentic and reliable
Identifiable, retrievable, and accessible
Retained in a safe and secure manner
Retained in a manner that is compliant with legal obligations
Available to others in line with appropriate ethical, data sharing and open access principles
Commensurate with the legitimate interests and protection of human participants of research data.
(UWTSD Research Data Management statement, 2018)
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7. Anonymity and confidentiality
‘The confidential and anonymous treatment of participants’ data is considered the norm for the conduct of research’ (BERA, 2018:21)
The participants in your research have the right to privacy.
This is achieved through ensuring you manage your research data with confidentiality and anonymity in mind.
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8. Anonymity
Being able to share your research is important. However, ethically we must protect our participants.
Anonymity is a valuable tool in allowing us to do this.
Maintaining anonymity means that you do not collect identifying information (such as name, address) for your participants.
Or, if your study requires this type of information as part of the research design, the data is stored so that individual responses cannot be linked directly to individuals.
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9. How can you anonymise data?
The process of anonymising data requires that identifiers are changed in some way.
This might mean identifying information is removed, substituted, distorted, generalised or aggregated.
Remember that a person's identity can be disclosed from:
Direct identifiers such as names, postcode information or pictures.
Indirect identifiers which, when linked with other available information, could identify someone, for example information on workplace, occupation, salary or age.
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10. But remember
Many studies do not need to collect any personal information at all.
However, anonymity is not necessarily the default position to take:
‘in some circumstances individual participants, or their guardians or responsible others, may want to specifically and willingly waive their right to confidentiality and anonymity: researchers should recognise participants’ rights to be identified in any publication of their original works or other inputs if they so wish’
(BERA, 2018:21).
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11. For instance
Your research might highlight some effective teaching strategies taking place in your school which you wish to disseminate in your cluster (or more widely).
In this case, you might decide to waive the right to keep the school name, or your specific year group anonymous.
However, you may still decide to maintain the anonymity of individual teachers and pupils within the school.
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12. Confidentiality
Confidentiality is usually maintained. This happens when the data collected can identify individuals in some way, for example if your are carrying out a case study of an individual pupil.
Confidentiality means that only the investigator(s) or members of the research team can identify the responses of individuals.
The researchers must make every effort to prevent anyone from outside of the study connecting individuals with their responses.
Individuals who give consent to be identified (ie who waive their right to confidentiality) must be fully aware of who will be able to see their information, and the purposes of this.
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13. Compliance: the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and research
The core principles of GDPR are the principles of ethical research data management:
Collect no more data than is necessary from an individual for the purpose for which it will be used; 
Obtain personal data fairly from the individual by giving them notice of the collection, and its specific purpose;
Retain the data for no longer than is necessary for that specified purpose;
Keep data safe and secure; 
Provide an individual with a copy of his or her personal data if they request it.
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14. Storing your research data
You must ensure that you store your research data securely.
For example, you may use electronic devices which have password protection and data encryption.
You may avoid using portable storage devices like USB sticks
Data should not be sent via or other forms of media that can be hacked.
Hard copies of any records should be stored in secure premises.
All members of a research team should understand how to protect the data.
See BERA (2018: 25).
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15. Find out more
The UK Data Archive has a comprehensive guide on consent, confidentiality and ethics.
BERA (2018) Ethical Guidelines for Educational Research
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