MRS Reviews Guidelines on Youth and Online Research
September 24 2010
In the UK, the Market Research Society (MRS) today launched two separate sets of draft guidelines: one on research with children and young people and one on online research.
Both these standards were last published in 2006 and are being revised now following changes to the MRS Code of Conduct in April this year. The consultation will run until the 19th of November.
The drafts have been developed by leading practitioners in the respective fields and the areas under scrutiny include:
- Collecting information ethically and lawfully from online social media
- Understanding 'personal data' in online environments
- Obtaining verifiable parent or responsible adult consent, and applying to MRSB to waive the requirements for this
- Understanding requirements for Criminal Records Bureau checks for interviewers and moderators who work with children.
MRSB Chair Geoff Gosling stressed the importance of guiding practitioners 'to ensure that online research continues to be undertaken in line with the ethical research principles which have worked so successfully for research over the last 60 years.' On the Children and Young People draft he explained that the proposed revision of the guidelines was to apply the already toughened up new rules for this age group in a number of the new research areas.
The draft guidelines can be downloaded at
www.mrs.org.uk/standards/consultation.htm , and comments should be emailed to
guidelines@mrs.org.uk .
All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.
