Data management, ethics and privacy: why should you care?

Whenever you do research, you need to be aware of how your research may affect others. These others could be persons that participate in your research, the field you are researching or the university or school providing you the context for your studies.​

To address this properly, universities, including Utrecht University, require that you work accordingly to ethical guidelines, privacy legislation & data management best-practices and, if your study involves human participants, have it approved by the Ethics Review Board (ERB). 

This module will guide you through the most important considerations on how to address ethical matters, make your study privacy compliant and integrate data management practices. In addition, the module output can been used for an ethical review. 

This module includes two different components ethics & privacy and data management. When filling in both components you have constructed a report that can serve as a compliance document that you should discuss with your supervisor. In addition, your report can be used for an assessment with the ERB, if your supervisor submits an application. You can also find insights from the field (with experiences from researchers) and additional resources around the subject of ethics and data management through the menu. 

Before you can enter one of the two forms, you will be asked to log in with your UU credentials, so the provided details can be saved. After completion of the first form, you can start the second without logging in again. After the completion of each form, the input will be mailed to you in the form of a comprehensive report. 

About the information you provide: We only collect information necessary for the creation of your form. While you’re filling in the form, the data will be accessible only to you and the Geosciences Data Team. Once completed, you will be emailed an automatically generated report that you can send to your research supervisor/s yourself. You can find more information on our privacy policy here.