Privacy and Consent

It's important in any research process to consider and take very seriously the consent and privacy of those who will be participating in the research. This space is for making a clear statement about what steps Occupy Researchers will take to ensure that research is done with consent of participants, and to ensure that the privacy of those who participate in research will be respected. Whenever information we gather (by interviews, surveys, visual documentation, data gathering from social network sites, or in any other form) is going to be made public, those who created or provided that information have a right to know that, should be asked consent, and if they desire, their information should be kept private.

[please note this is a general page about the need for privacy and consent. Each OR Working Group, and different research projects, are developing their own language and tools around privacy and consent.]

Note about the General Demographic and Political Participation Survey

Several people have asked for more information about Occupy Research, and specifically mentioned a lack of information on this page; the following is an attempt to provide more info about who/what/why this Survey exists:

Occupy Research is a totally open network formed through a transparent and participatory process that mirrors the evolution of Occupy as a whole, with a lot of participation by occupiers and sympathetic researchers from many different camps, GAs, working groups, and institutions. You can find ALL of the minutes from all of our meetings linked from this wiki (occupyresearch.net).

The Survey Working Group, and the development of this survey, followed the same (open, transparent, accessible to anyone w/the interest) process. We have done our best to be in communication w/research working groups in multiple locations, with interoccupy, with GAs that we have participated in, etc.

re: privacy: the survey gathers no individual identifying info (name, contact, address) and results are anonymous. The data, as announced in multiple places, will be PUBLICLY AVAILABLE under creative commons attribution sharealike 2.0 license. Individual occupations and local research working groups are (of course) totally free to participate or not in the general survey process, but we hope that many as possible will! Participating in the shared process means using the shared survey instrument, uploading results to the shared dataset, and being ok with having the (non personally identifying) data being PUBLIC and shared.

The accountability comes from the process we've used to build a research network within the occupy movement, using process from the movement (consensus and transparency), with researchers who (mostly) also identify with the movement, and by listening as much as possible to feedback from others within this movement :)

I hope this helps.


Also Please check out the full survey guide: http://occupyresearch.wikispaces.com/file/view/OccupyResearch+Survey+Guide+and+Instrument.pdf

peace,
@schock for Occupy Research

Consent statement

Concrete steps we'll take to get informed consent

Attached is a general informed consent form taken from a VA template and pared down somewhat. It needs to be edited!
survey consent form.doc

Privacy

concrete steps we'll take to protect people's privacy.

For example: the General Demographic and Political Participation survey is gathering no personally identifiable information with the surveys. Surveys are anonymous. Aggregate information will be freely and publicly available.

Release form

We also think that we should develop a shared release form that states that interview are public information/oral history and (give the person the option to be identified or anonymous, and if anon, should not include any unique identifying information and may be used for academic, journalistic, movement, or any other purposes.