Managing and Sharing Research Data From Human Participants

If your research involves working with people (e.g. through surveys, interviews, trials, experiments, focus groups or other methods) then it is essential to know the legal, ethical and contractual obligations you have towards research participants and how to put them into practice.

This course will outline how to collect, store, protect and share the personal data you may encounter as part of your work. Specific attention will be paid to the requirements of data protection legislation for recruiting participants and gaining consent, managing the data securely, and anonymising data so that it might be shared for future use.

This is a blended learning course with approximately 80 minutes of pre-course learning and a 200-minute practical session, comprising:

1. Essential pre-course learning delivered via a collection of online resources (links below) that introduces key principles and practices. Interactive quizzes are used to help check comprehension.
2. An interactive face-to-face session where you apply your pre-course learning to real-life research project case studies. Working together in groups, you will explore the issues and risks, and present back your mitigation strategies for wider discussion to formulate optimum solutions. Expert facilitators will be on hand to provide practical guidance and support. This face-to-face session is designed to be highly interactive, so you must be willing to actively participate in the group work and discussions. There will also be opportunity for attendees to seek specialist advice from the expert facilitators.

Expert content creators and facilitators are drawn from the Information Governance Office; Research Governance, Ethics and Integrity; Centre for Epidemiology Versus Arthritis; Research IT; and The University of Manchester Library.

Links to online resources:

• Find out how the data protection principles apply to research (9 minutes read)
• Research with human participants: your responsibilities under UK GDPR (7 minutes read)
• Participant engagement and consent (3 minutes read)
• Recruitment of research participants (6 minutes read)
• Participant Information Sheets (5 minutes read)
• Obtaining informed consent (7 minutes read)
• Research with children and young people (5 minutes read)
• Research with additional considerations (4 minutes read)
• Data protection considerations (8 minutes read)
• Anonymisation and pseudonymisation of research data (18 minutes read)
• Keeping your research data secure (6 mins read)