A practical framework for ethics: the PD-net approach to supporting ethics compliance in public display studies

Reviewer: Barrett Hazeltine

Langheinrich et al. present a formal process for ensuring ethical compliance in the implementation of the EU-funded PD-Net project. (PD refers to "public display." The project involves "large scale networks of pervasive public displays and associated sensors.") The process is especially useful in countries that do not have well-established human factors protocols. The formal aspect of the process enhances research that is multi-disciplinary and multi-site. The process has four components: an ethics advisory board, base documentation, study process templates, and worksheets. The process itself has three phases: 1) preparatory, during which the ethics advisory board is established; 2) research, during which the worksheets are developed and the research is matched to existing study process templates (if no existing templates match, then new ones are prepared); and 3) closing, during which collected personal data is deleted and the report is submitted to the board. The advisory board approves new templates. In the research phase, informed consent documents are prepared. Other documents, for the use of all researchers, are also prepared, including an "ethics primer" and guides for interviews, surveys, public trials, and volunteer studies. Templates for each of these documents are available at http://pd-net.org/ethics/, and sample pages are included in the paper. Using the study process templates makes the process modular and thus scalable. Basing the process on written documents reviewed by the entire research team improves the quality of the overall research and forces each aspect to be examined. The library of templates should be useful to anyone doing related research. The process seems reasonable. Online Computing Reviews Service