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Topic 6. Direct contact with re-identified subjects.

Once a researcher has made a possible re-identification, consider cases where the researcher may or may not contact the person who is the subject of the data to warn him about findings, to see if s/he is correct, or other reasons.

What are important issues? What are risks and harms? Which issues are most likely to occur, and if they do occur, which are most likely to have significant adverse impact?


Post 1
The researcher should contact the subject of the data to warn him or her of
findings only if sending the warning justifies the effort and cost of contacting
the subject. For example, if the subject's life is at risk.

Post 2
Researchers should always contact the re-identified person, in order to warn about the
risks of publicly available or re-identifiable data.

Post 3
Always, unless the researcher has a reason to believe that information could be harmful to the individual.

Post 4
You should always contact the person if they are living. If they are not capable of
responding or making a decision, you must contact the person who has power of
attorney over them.

Post 5
A researcher should always try to contact the subjects of the re-identified data to the
best of their ability.

Post 6
The researcher should always contact the subject. Certain exceptions could be made in
cases where the cost of contacting the subjects severely outweighs the consequences of
not (with extremely not sensitive information)

Post 7
It's probably important to contact the subject in the vast majority of cases.
People will likely only pay attention to and act on issues of privacy once they've
been personally affected by something of that nature. How else can people
make strong decisions on / participate politically in privacy if they don't have
access to some of the potentially most weighty and persuasive information?

Post 8
The IRB approval process should address these issues, so it is not solely a matter of the
researcher's discretion. In general, IRB generally tends to do a cost-benefit analysis of
these issues, which I would support (costs of contact for researcher v. benefits to
subject).



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