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Cited by 65Ethics in Clinical ResearchChildren's Rights and ParticipationFocus Groups and Qualitative Methods

Exploring the ethical issues in research using digital data collection strategies with minors: A scoping review

Open access
Facca, Danica, Smith, Maxwell J., Shelley, Jacob, Lizotte, Daniel, Donelle, Lorie·2020·PLOS ONE
DOI 10.1371/journal.pone.0237875PMC PMC7451523
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Abstract

While emerging digital health technologies offer researchers new avenues to collect real-time data, little is known about current ethical dimensions, considerations, and challenges that are associated with conducting digital data collection in research with minors. As such, this paper reports the findings of a scoping review which explored existing literature to canvass current ethical issues that arise when using digital data collection in research with minors. Scholarly literature was searched using electronic academic databases for articles that provided explicit ethical analysis or presented empirical research that directly addressed ethical issues related to digital data collection used in research with minors. After screening 1,156 titles and abstracts, and reviewing 73 full-text articles, 20 articles were included in this review. Themes which emerged across the reviewed literature included: consent, data handling, minors' data rights, observing behaviors that may result in risk of harm to participants or others, private versus public conceptualizations of data generated through social media, and gatekeeping. Our findings indicate a degree of uncertainty which invariably exists with regards to the ethics of research that involves minors and digital technology. The reviewed literature suggests that this uncertainty can often lead to the preclusion of minors from otherwise important lines of research inquiry. While uncertainty warrants ethical consideration, increased ethical scrutiny and restricting the conduct of such research raises its own ethical challenges. We conclude by discussing and recommending the ethical merits of co-producing ethical practice between researchers and minors as a mechanism to proceed with such research while addressing concerns around uncertainty.

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  • Drawing social media experiences helps move beyond ethical limitations of collecting sensitive digital data from young people.

    “Drawing social media experiences also helps to move beyond some of the ethical limitations of collecting sensitive, private digital data from young people (Facca et al., 2020).”

    From Teen Girls’ Experiences Negotiating the Ubiquitous Dick Pic: Sexual Double Standards and the Normalization of Image Based Sexual Harassment (2021) · cites this paper as Facca et al., 2020

    The Results (Data handling; page unavailable) describe privacy and consent concerns when researchers collect minors’ social media data. The paper does not say that drawing social media experiences helps address those concerns; searches for drawing and visual elicitation found no such passage. (LLM, conf=0.83)

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3 of the 47 references couldn’t be matched to a known paper.

Research works printed but not linked: 1

  1. [4]Cowden M. Capacity, claims and children’s rights. CPT. 2012; 11: 362– 380. 10.1057/cpt.2011.43 · DOI

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Authors
Facca, D., Smith, M. J., Shelley, J., Lizotte, D., & Donelle, L.
Affiliations
Western University (CA)
Corresponding author
Facca, Danica
ORCID
Venue
PLOS ONE
Publisher
Public Library of Science (PLoS)
Published
2020-08-27
Volume
15
Issue
8
Pages
e0237875
ISSN
1932-6203 (ISSN-L)
DOI
10.1371/journal.pone.0237875
PMC
PMC7451523
OpenAlex
W3081363283
Cited by
65
References
47
Citations by year
2026: 9 · 2025: 8 · 2024: 21 · 2023: 12 · 2022: 8 · 2021: 6 · 2020: 1
FWCI
1.13
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • PLoS ONE (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • Scholar Commons (University of South Carolina) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
  • Scholarship@Western (Western University) (submittedVersion)
Topics
  • Health Sciences › Medicine › Public Health, Environmental and Occupational Health › Ethics in Clinical Research
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Children's Rights and Participation
  • Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Focus Groups and Qualitative Methods
Keywords
research ethics, minors, digital data collection, informed consent, data handling, social media data, risk of harm, gatekeeping, digital health technologies, children's participation in research
MeSH terms
Data Management, Behavior, Data Collection, Humans, Informed Consent, Publications, Risk, Ethics, Research, Minors, Social Media

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