I am nearing that stage in my doctoral journey where I have to think about the study I will conduct for my dissertation. There was a time when I was overwhelmed and a bit scared of reaching this point. Now that I've come this far, I am excited for what comes next.
I intend to use video gamers in my study. I plan to observe their behavior within a virtual world. The more I dig into the concepts of confidentiality and research ethics, the more I have to ensure the privacy and confidentiality of my participants are maintained. Not everyone may think so, but online personas are just as important to people as their real world personas. People often take great care, and go through great lenghts, to develop their online reputations. Video gamers are no exception and in some respects, a video gamer's online persona is just as important (if not more so) than their real world identity.
When you play an online video game you are often required to create a unique online name (or handle) that links your accomplishments (and failures) under a single identity. It is this name that other players see in-game. It is possible that some gamers will not want their online IDs to be made public, even if it is for science. The online ID uniquely identifies the person. If someone were to get ahold of an online ID they could identify the person behind the keyboard which may place that person at risk. To account for this, I need to ensure that online gamer tags/IDs will be kept in confidence and not shared publicly. This means that if I use screenshots from the game in my dissertation or other publication, I must ensure the gamer IDs are redacted. I will still need to maintain the data lineage (human >> real name >> gamer ID >> code) but this information will not be published and will not be included in dissertation. The information will be kept under lock and key and will be destroyed according to the IRB's recommendations. At most, the data will be maintained for a period of 3 years and then destroyed.
This is just one area that I need to plan for. There are other elements regarding privacy and confidentiality that I must account for in my study's protocol.
Goonies never say die.