Ensnaring Webs and Nets: Ethical issues in Internet-based research

Surveying the experience of living with metastatic breast cancer: comparing face-to-face and online recruitment

Abstract

With its growing use, the Internet offers researchers a novel approach in reaching those they seek to study locally, nationally or globally. The purpose of this paper is to describe our experience of using the Internet as one means of recruiting to a research study exploring the experience of women with metastatic breast cancer and to compare the methodological issues of using face-to-face and online approaches to survey recruitment. The survey incorporated the Functional Assessment of Cancer Therapy-Breast (FACT-B) quality of life measure, a patient experience with care measure and open ended text questions about respondents’ physical, emotional and practical needs. Recruitment was done face-to-face in two cancer centres and on the Breast Cancer Care (it is the UK’s leading provider of information, practical assistance and emotional support for anyone affected by breast cancer) Website, recruiting 110 people in the cancer centres and 125 from the Website. The age range was 25–84. Website respondents were significantly younger than cancer centre respondents (<0.000). They also had significantly lower social well-being on the FACT-B scale and were less satisfied with information and advice (<0.000) and their personal experience of care (<0.010). Finally, we consider the role of the Internet in research and the methodological and ethical challenges this presents both now and in the future.

Issues in data generation using email group conversations for nursing research

AIM

The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the issues we have confronted when generating and analysing dialogue data by using electronic mail.

BACKGROUND

The decision to use email for our research arose from our developing understanding of some of the consequences of illness that people living with chronic illness confront in their lives. As researchers, we recognized the potential of the Internet for computer-mediated communication using email for communication between researchers and research participants.

DISCUSSION

We consider the functional aspects of generating data by email, such as the software needed, and then explore the issues encountered during the research process including ethical considerations, fluctuating participation, participants' familiarity with using email, facilitating lurkers towards participation, establishing group norms, and the role of the facilitator.

CONCLUSION

As a collaborative inquiry, email conversation allowed us to spend time with participants over 2 years to explore chronic illness experience. However the scope and viability of computer-mediated communication as a qualitative method of research remains relatively unexplored, hence this paper.

The ethics of research using electronic mail discussion groups

AIM

The aim of this paper is to identify and discuss the ethical considerations that have confronted and challenged the research team when researchers facilitate conversations using private electronic mail discussion lists.

BACKGROUND

The use of electronic mail group conversations, as a collaborative data generation method, remains underdeveloped in nursing. Ethical challenges associated with this approach to data generation have only begun to be considered. As receipt of ethics approval for a study titled; 'Describing transition with people who live with chronic illness' we have been challenged by many ethical dilemmas, hence we believe it is timely to share the issues that have confronted the research team. These discussions are essential so we can understand the possibilities for research interaction, communication, and collaboration made possible by advanced information technologies.

DISCUSSION

Our experiences in this study have increased our awareness for ongoing ethical discussions about privacy, confidentiality, consent, accountability and openness underpinning research with human participants when generating data using an electronic mail discussion group. We describe how we work at upholding these ethical principles focusing on informed consent, participant confidentiality and privacy, the participants as threats to themselves and one another, public-private confusion, employees with access, hackers and threats from the researchers.

CONCLUSION

A variety of complex issues arise during cyberspace research that can make the application of traditional ethical standards troublesome. Communication in cyberspace alters the temporal, spatial and sensory components of human interaction, thereby challenging traditional ethical definitions and calling to question some basic assumptions about identity and ones right to keep aspects of it confidential. Nurse researchers are bound by human research ethics protocols; however, the nature of research by electronic mail generates moral issues as well as ethical concerns. Vigilance by researchers is required to ensure that data are viewed within the scope of the enabling ethics approval.