Ethics should be considered at the start of every research project. Librarian's (or library staff) can help!
As a researcher, ask yourself:
*Anytime you are about to start collecting or giving your data, consider the ethical practices behind it. As a researcher, consider addressing ethical concerns in the data collection that you may have for your own personal data use.
Anytime we think about data collection, ask:
The AEA's founding purpose of "the encouragement of economic research" requires intellectual and professional integrity. Integrity demands honesty, care, and transparency in conducting and presenting research; disinterested assessment of ideas; acknowledgement of limits of expertise; and disclosure of real and perceived conflicts of interest. source: AEA Code of Conduct
See Princeton University's Policies on Research Misconduct and Research Ethics
You may have access to proprietary data through the Library (or your department). When you share your research, remember that the proprietary data itself can never be shared, published, or deposited in a data repository. The Library negotiates license terms and the researcher has the responsibility to comply with the legally binding institutional agreement. If you are ever unsure, ask your Librarian or the administrator of the license contract!
Properly citing data assists in the research process by giving data creators proper credit for their work, aids replication, provides permanent and reliable information about the data source, helps track the impact of the data, and facilitates resource discovery and access.
Provide citations for data sets when you have either conducted secondary analyses of publicly archived data or archived your own data being presented for the first time in the current work.
If you are citing existing analysis or statistics, cite the publication in which the data were published (e.g., a journal article, report, or webpage) rather than the data set itself.
Parts of the Research Process:
It is never OK to do any of the following extraction methods on any U.S. Government database or Library subscription database:
*Alternatively, use an application programming interface (API)
Restricted data, is data that cannot be released directly to the public research community because of the possible risks to study participants as well as the confidentiality promised to them. Access may be gained to these data requiring guarantee of strict legal and ethical use including a sound data security plan and other supporting documentation ensuring trustworthiness.
Repositories such as ICPSR remove potentially identifying information for their public-use data and grant access to the data which contain highly sensitive personal information following an application process.
Much of the personal data that we each generate is beyond our immediate control as companies get a hold of them to use for market intelligence.
Examples of personal data include:
However, sensitive personal data is a special category that must be treated with extra security.
Examples of sensitive data include:
More comprehensive overview on levels of sensitive data, visit Princeton Research Data Service - Data Security
