Reinforcing research ethics in the digital age

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Research ethics underpin the profession, ensuring that care is always taken to protect individual participants and prevent harm as well as manage any risks, preserve their confidentiality and respect the process of informed consent. These objectives remain as compelling and valid today as they always have, but research ethics in a digital age raise a multiplicity of issues that challenge these objectives in both obvious and nuanced ways. 

reviewing the MRS Code 

Greater volumes of personal data are being collected and processed in ever more innovative ways. Growth is exponential, with more data created in the past two years than in the entire previous history of the human race. 

Researchers operating in this data-rich environment are often helped by technology such as wearable devices, connected devices, location-tracking sensors and artificial intelligence (AI) and by algorithms that analyse the vast amounts of data. All this is used to create and deliver richer, deeper insights. In this digital, data-intensive environment, researchers need to keep reviewing the underlying ethical approaches in a way that re-affirms individual rights while ensuring innovative and beneficial use of this exciting technology.  

Against this background, MRS is reviewing the Code of Conduct, first adopted on 5 November 1954, and last revised in September 2014, to ensure that it is both compliant with the new legislative requirements (in the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and proposed ePrivacy Regulation) and helps to navigate the often messy reality of data analytics of big data sets. 

Ethical research design 

Ethical considerations need to be embedded in all research projects as part of the project management process and considered at all stages and for all approaches including at sampling and recruitment, generating primary data or collecting secondary data and in reporting results.  

Operating with greater internal accountability using both internal ethics reviews and privacy impact assessments will ensure that research projects are privacy-centric with a robust ethical grounding. Reviews will need to consider, document and implement a range of issues and solutions such as:

• What is the need for collection of the personal datasets? The exact purpose? Is the data collection proportionate? What is the period of storage? 
  

• Are there sufficient and adequate safeguards to protect the individual’s rights? 

• What technical and security measures are in place to ensure confidentiality of the data and effective anonymisation?  

• What privacy risks or other risks have been identified?

• Have solutions to either prevent or reduce the risks, or mitigate likely harm been identified?

An emerging risk in today’s environment is that re-identification can more easily occur through data links, raising the spectre of breaching anonymity and confidentiality and risking harming participants. 

Role of informed consent

Another core issue is the approach to informed consent, which is both a legal and ethical requirement. Although consent has always been – and must remain – the core default position for research projects, it is time for an honest but careful discussion about what informed consent means in a digital age. 

Recent guidance from data protection regulators including the Information Commissioners’ Office (ICO) stress that there is no hierarchy of legal grounds when collecting data. Consent is only one of many legal grounds. What is important is that consent is only used when it is truly appropriate and offers individuals genuine choice and control. Ensuring full, informed consent can often be difficult – especially where personal data is not being collected directly from the participants. The challenge is to devise innovative techniques of gaining consent for research projects and to understand its limits: 

• Do participants have a very clear and unambiguous understanding of the purpose(s) for collecting the data and how it will be used?

• Is the information appropriately tailored for the audience and the research platform?

• Are there circumstances in which consent is not appropriate or cannot be obtained without disproportionate effort? 

The approach to these issues will need to be discussed as part of the ongoing review of Code provisions. 

Future-orientated Code 

MRS has always been fully committed to enabling accredited members and organisations to engage in their business activities while keeping within the law and the ethics of the industry. It is vital that in this digitally focused world, self-regulatory and trust frameworks such as the Code of Conduct and the MRS Fair Data Scheme, continue to ensure that organisations take their obligations seriously and use data in a transparent manner. 

Research can only be conducted with the trust and engagement of participants, and the lawful and responsible use of participant data in the light of emerging technology is more important now than ever. 

This core commitment to ethics cannot, and will not, change in any revision of the Code. The challenge will be to ensure that it continues to support all those engaged in market research in maintaining professional standards while reassuring the public that research continues to be carried out in a professional and ethical manner. 

Dr Michelle Goddard is director of policy and standards at the MRS