Secondary Data Analysis: Ethical Issues and Challenges

BackgroundResearch does not always involve collection of data from the participants. There is huge amount of data that is being collected through the routine management information system and other sur-veys or research activities. The existing data can be analyzed to generate new hypothesis or answer critical research questions. This saves lots of time, money and other resources. Also data from large sample surveys may be of higher quality and representative of the population. It avoids repeti-tion of research & wastage of resources by de-tailed exploration of existing research data and also ensures that sensitive topics or hard to reach populations are not over researched (1). However, there are certain ethical issues pertaining to secondary data analysis which should be taken care of before handling such data.Secondary data analysisSecondary analysis refers to the use of existing research data to find answer to a question that was different from the original work (2). Secondary data can be large scale surveys or data collected as part of personal research. Although there is gen-eral agreement about sharing the results of large scale surveys, but little agreement exists about the second. While the fundamental ethical issues re-lated to secondary use of research data remain the same, they have become more pressing with the advent of new technologies. Data sharing, compil-ing and storage have become much faster and eas-ier. At the same time, there are fresh concerns about data confidentiality and security.Issues in Secondary data analysisConcerns about secondary use of data mostly re-volve around potential harm to individual subjects and issue of return for consent. Secondary data vary in terms of the amount of identifying infor-mation in it. If the data has no identifying infor-mation or is completely devoid of such infor-mation or is appropriately coded so that the re-searcher does not have access to the codes, then it does not require a full review by the ethical board. The board just needs to confirm that the data is actually anonymous. However, if the data contains identifying information on participants or infor-mation that could be linked to identify partici-pants, a complete review of the proposal will then be made by the board. The researcher will then have to explain why is it unavoidable to have identifying information to answer the research question and must also indicate how participants' privacy and the confidentiality of the data will be protected. If the above said concerns are satisfactorily addressed, the researcher can then request for a waiver of consent.If the data is freely available on the Internet, books or other public forum, permission for fur-ther use and analysis is implied. However, the ownership of the original data must be acknowl-edged. If the research is part of another research project and the data is not freely available, except to the original research team, explicit, written permission for the use of the data must be ob-tained from the research team and included in the application for ethical clearance.However, there are certain other issues pertaining to the data that is procured for secondary analysis. The data obtained should be adequate, relevant but not excessive. In secondary data analysis, the original data was not collected to answer the pre-sent research question. Thus the data should be evaluated for certain criteria such as the methodology of data collection, accuracy, period of data collection, purpose for which it was col-lected and the content of the data. …