Abstract
To ensure the privacy of participants is an ethical and legal obligation for researchers. Yet, achieving anonymity can be technically difficult. When observing participants over time one needs mechanisms to link the data from the different sessions. Also, it is often necessary to expand the sample of participants during a project. To help researchers simplify the administration of such studies the CANDIDATE tool is proposed. This tool allows simple, unique, and anonymous participant IDs to be generated on the fly. Simulations were used to validate the uniqueness of the IDs as well as their anonymity. The tool can successfully generate IDs with a low collision rate while maintaining high anonymity. A practical compromise between integrity and anonymity was achieved when the ID space is about ten times the number of participants. The tool holds potential for making it easier to collect more comprehensive empirical evidence over time that in turn will provide a more solid basis for drawing reliable conclusions based on research data. An open-source implementation of the tool that runs locally in a web-browser is made available.
Highlights
The privacy and safety of participants is of utmost importance in research that involves people
To help researchers simplify the administration of such studies the CANDIDATE tool is proposed
The World Medical Association’s Declaration of Helsinki–Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects states that “Every precaution must be taken to protect the privacy of research subjects and the confidentiality of their personal information.”
Summary
The privacy and safety of participants is of utmost importance in research that involves people. The World Medical Association’s Declaration of Helsinki–Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects states that “Every precaution must be taken to protect the privacy of research subjects and the confidentiality of their personal information.”. When researchers need to store personal information such as names, national ID numbers, phone numbers, etc., the researchers need to document adequate mechanisms for secure storage of the data, and routines for deleting the data at the end of a project. Often researchers must file formal applications for permissions to store personal data. Health related research often involves sensitive information. The issue of privacy of participants in research studies is highly relevant in many disciplines. It is often necessary to expand the sample of participants during a project
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