Essay Sample on Ethics in Research: Protecting Participant Info & Data Security

Introduction

Ethics is an essential factor in our daily lives. Ethics control whatever we do or say as well as how to practice our professions. Therefore, it is important to aware of ethical considerations in place work, a career as well as in the standard setting. This essay aims at describing measures to protect participant information in research as well as precautions taken to ensure the information on computers, flash drives and other electronic storage used in research are well taken care of.

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Measures to Protect Participant Data in a Research Study

Researchers have to make any information they obtain from third parties is well protected and properly stored. According to IRB, the researchers have to assign codes which may be used in identifying questionnaires are instruments used in a research study. Also, there is a need to ensure availability of data security plan which will be used to ensure an information transfer is encrypted and password protected. Moreover, at the end of the research study, the data collected has to be deleted or destroyed to avoid illegal access and manipulation. Researchers' further need to ensure that data is not stored in external storage services like Google docs without proper authorization.

Resnik (2006) showed that ethics is essential in research. Researchers are required to adhere to ethics through honesty, confidentiality, objectivity, respect of intellectual property and openness. These ethical considerations are critical in ensuring that participant data and information is protected and handled with care. Also, researchers need to ensure human subjects protection by minimizing harms and risks, respecting human dignity, ensuring privacy and independence to conduct the research fairly. Also, Bloom (2010) states that researchers have to consider ethics while selecting or choosing data as well as there is a need to involve clients directly during data collection.

Precautions and Protections for Electronic Storage Devices

Electronic storage devices include computers, flash drives, cloud computing, disks, and hard drives. Researchers use these devices to store information collected during a research study. Therefore, this information needs to be protected to avoid illegal or unauthorized access. The information on these devices has to be subjected to information security through authentication, access control, encryption, password security, and backups. Authentication ensures there is no illegal access as the researcher has to be identified before accessing the information. Access control limits access to relevant or required information only. Encryption ensures that when the data, it is encoded in a manner that only allows authorized personnel to access it while password security ensures that those accessing the information have personal identification keys or password before using the information. Backups, on the other hand, ensure that any information lost can be retrieved and accessed by authorized personnel only.

Jackson (2010) further states that researchers in social work need to be ethically responsible while handling subject data. Ethical considerations ensure subject data is well protected and properly stored to avoid any unwarranted access. Also, this will ensure the data is used for the required purpose only.

Conclusion

Ethical considerations in social work social research study are very crucial. They ensure subjects or participant data is well taken care of and protected. Also, ethical considerations make sure the data collected is well protected in storage devices to prevent unauthorized access. Furthermore, ethics ensure that data collected is used for the intended purpose after which is destroyed. Nevertheless, ethical considerations make sure human subjects are protected and are not subjected to risks during a research study.

References

Bloom, M. (2010). Client-centered evaluation: Ethics for21st-century practitioners. Journal of Social Work Values and Ethics, 7(1), 24-31. Retrieved from https://secure.ce-credit.com/articles/101748/3bloom.pdf

Jackson, K. F. (2010). Ethical considerations in social work research with multiracial individuals. Journal of social work values and ethics, 7(1), 1-10. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Kelly_Jackson10/publication/267256386_Ethical_Considerations_in_Social_Work_Research_with_Multiracial_Individuals/links/56b0e1ed08ae5ec4ed483c52/Ethical-Considerations-in-Social-Work-Research-with-Multiracial-Individuals.pdf

Resnik, D. B., & Sharp, R. R. (2006). Protecting third parties in human subjects' research. IRB, 28(4), 1. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3951397/