I'm not sure if he's on this list, but I saw Joshua Fairchild deliver an excellent talk on this topic (and human subject experimentation in virtual spaces) at the International Symposium for Digital Ethics. You might see whether he has suggestions for you. http://law.wlu.edu/faculty/profiledetail.asp?id=242 tnx, kc ____________________________________________ Katy Culver Assistant Professor School of Journalism & Mass Communication Associate Director Center for Journalism Ethics University of Wisconsin-Madison kbculver@wisc.edu 608-575-4082 On Mar 10, 2013, at 6:47 PM, "Janet Salmons, Ph.D." <jesalmons@gmail.com> wrote:
Erica,
This is an important topic and your study could make a real contribution. But...I know that my institution's IRB would not approve the study as you have described it. If you are interviewing youth under 18, parents must consent. I am curious about why you think parents would not give consent? Personally, I think parents want to protect their kids from bullying and their perspectives might be an interesting complement to the youth interviews and add more depth to your study.
A suggestion: you might want to stick with one social media site, to simplify your process. You will also need to make sure that your study does not violate the user parameters of the community-- for recruiting or for collecting data..
This site may be of interest: http://www.ncjj.org/irb/index.asp
Also, you might find chapters in Cases in Online Interview Research (2012) of interest. - Chapter 3. Case: Stranger in a Strange Land: The Challenges and Benefits of Online Interviews in the Social Networking Space Allison Deegan Allison discusses issues and challenges of a study that involved interviews conducted in Facebook using chat, with young (but over age 18) participants.
- Chapter 4. Case: Interviewing in Virtual Worlds: An Application of Best Practices Jonathan Cabiria Jon was able to convince his IRB to allow (adult) participants' avatars to "sign" the informed consent, in a study about LGBT experiences in virtual worlds as compared to "real" worlds. He offers his insights into finer points of protection of digital representations of human subjects.
(The book is on Amazon, print or Kindle, as well as other booksellers.)
I'f be happy to chat with you if you want to contact me off list.
All the best, Janet
Janet Salmons Ph.D. Core Faculty, Capella University School of Business Doctoral Program and Vision2Lead, Inc. Site- http://www.vision2lead.com Follow Twitter at #einterview Now available as Kindle e-books: Online Interviews in Real Time and Cases in Online Interview Research PO Box 943 Boulder, CO 80306-0943 jsalmons@vision2lead.com _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
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