Data collection and survey management

Purpose

Collecting data from human subjects, whether via survey or other means, introduces ethical obligations and privacy/confidentiality requirements to your project as per the Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans – TCPS 2 (2022).

researchers

Classifying your data is the first step to knowing what safeguards are required to securely process or store your data.
- Classify data

“REDCap (Research Electronic Data Capture) is a free and secure data-management web application for building and managing online surveys and databases. While REDCap can be used to collect virtually any type of data, it is specifically geared to support online or offline data capture for research studies and operations." The University of Toronto's REDCap instance is able to collect Level 1 through Level 4 data.
- https://act.utoronto.ca/redcap/
  - Includes eligibility guidelines, start-up guides, access request instructions, and training.

Your human ethics protocol will need to specify the platform or solution you are using to collect data and how security is being maintain. It is essential that you adhere to the requirements outlined within your protocol and should a new platform or solution be required, that you amend your protocol.
If you are unsure about your obligations, please contact the relevant ethics unit.
- Ethics in Human Research | VPRI

Please consult with the Human Research and Ethics Unit and Information Security and/or your local IT group before engaging with one of the vendors below so as to determine if it is a suitably secure option for your data.