Ethical use of Digital Data

The guidelines presented here have been developed to assist researchers who are conducting, and ethics committee members who are assessing, research involving digital data.

Digital data presents researchers and ethics committees with familiar and novel ethical issues. Accepted strategies for managing issues such as privacy and confidentiality, and informed consent, need rethinking.

The qualities of digital data, including its mobility and replicability, present new kinds of ethical issues which emerge in relation to data governance, data security and data management.

This document has five parts.