There may be ethical or legal issues with data that is considered to be:
Personal - data which relates to a human individual who can be identified
Confidential - data given in confidence or agreed to be kept in secret between two knowing parties
Sensitive personal - data that may identify a person's identify, including race, ethnic origin, political opinion, religious beliefs, mental or physical health, trade union membership, criminal history.
Researchers are usually expected to obtain informed consent for people to participate in research and for use of the data that is collected.
Anonymization techniques are used to create data about individuals that does not reveal the identify of any of the individuals, and cannot be linked to other data that would reveal the identity of individuals. This includes:
Removing direct identifiers, e.g. name or address
Reducing the precision of information or a variable, e.g. replacing date of birth by age groups
Generalizing the meaning of detailed text, e.g. replacing a doctor's detailed area of medical expertise with an area of medical specialty
Using pseudonyms
Hide outliers by restricting the upper or lower ranges of an variable, e.g. top-coding salaries
Privacy refers to the protection of person information from unauthorized access by others.
Confidentiality is the right of privacy and of non-release of disclosed personal information that involves humans. Researchers may be subject to legal requirements to prevent the release of private, personally identifiable information provided by research subjects.
Intellectual property will affect the way both you and others can use data.
Failure to clarify rights at the start of the research process can lead to unexpected limitations to:
your research,
its dissemination,
future related research projects, and
associated profit or credit.
Copyright is a legal form of intellectual property rights. If you are interested in applying a license to your own data, there are a number of ways to do so. (see Permissions below).
