FYI: Researchers monitoring Net support groups

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Researchers monitoring Net support groups:

Privacy concerns raised at Net researchers' meeting

http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/cti535.htm

LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — Don't get too comfortable in your online support

group. A researcher may be lurking, recording your outpourings in the

name of science. In fact, a researcher posing as a member of the support

group may be posting messages simply to observe the reaction from

participants.

As more researchers turn to the Internet for studies, there is growing

concern about the potential harm to online users unaware they have

become research subjects when they discuss diseases, marital problems

and sexual identity crises. Online research ethics — specifically, the

lack of any meaningful guidelines — was one of the chief topics of

discussion this week at the inaugural meeting of the Association of

Internet Researchers.

''We're waiting for a major lawsuit,'' said Sarina Chen, professor of

communications at the University of Northern Iowa in Cedar Falls. ''Many

people consider downloading data from the Internet 'content analysis.'

That's very naive.'' She ought to know: She said she almost lost her job

when participants in a support group for eating disorders complained to

her superiors about the tone of some postings that one of her students

had

made as part of a class assignment.

Failing to get consent before monitoring Internet chat rooms and other

discussion forums amounts to an invasion of privacy and can make

participants more guarded in their dealings with one another, Chen said.

In more extreme cases, other researchers warned, a posting inserted by a

researcher can shift the nature of discussion and prompt participants to

take action they otherwise would not.

Barbara Lackritz, a leukemia survivor from St. Louis who runs more than

two dozen cancer support groups, said researchers have been dropping in

with increased frequency. ''It's very frustrating,'' she said in a

telephone interview. ''We have all kinds of researchers, from kids who

are in high school to master's degree candidates who want to do a

thesis.'' She said researchers who want to monitor her discussion groups

often get

permission first from group moderators. But too often, she said,

researchers don't ask, and ''think we're a slab of people waiting to do

research for them.''

She said one support-group participant who hadn't told his friends,

family and neighbors about his cancer started getting phone calls all of

a sudden from people saying, ''I'm sorry.'' He then learned that a

researcher had posted his full name and diagnosis on a Web site. Now

that participant uses a pseudonym. ''He was furious,'' Lackritz said.

''In the long run, it hurt him financially and in his relationships with

family.''

Federal law and university review boards generally prohibit experiments

on humans without consent, though some observations in public settings

are acceptable. But when is a public group considered private and a

private group considered public? Many discussion groups are open to the

public, but participants generally assume that fellow members join

because they have similar interests or concerns. That makes such forums

less like a public square and more like someone's living room, said Amy

Bruckman, a professor of computing at Georgia Institute of Technology in

Atlanta.

Other researchers, however, believe they can monitor those discussions

as long as they do not identify subjects in research papers. ''It's more

important how data is analyzed and disseminated than how it is

gathered,'' said ph Walther, professor of communications, psychology

and information technology at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy,

N.Y. Storm King, a Springfield, Mass., psychologist and spokesman for

the International Society for Mental Health Online, said seeking consent

can actually cause participants to clam up, making observations of

natural settings more difficult.

The Association of Internet Researchers will probably decide Sunday to

form a task force to draft guidelines by next year's meeting, said

, the group's president. Snowball, professor of

speech communication at Augustana College in Rock Island, Ill., said he

was surprised when students proposed to eavesdrop on a support group and

create fake traumas for the group to consider. He was even more

surprised when he learned the students got the idea from other faculty

members, who believed the practice was OK because participants would

probably never know.

''The online world is still new and opens up all sorts of ways of doing

research,'' said Ess, a professor in cultural studies at Drury

University in Springfield, Mo. ''It's much easier to lurk in a chat room

undetected than it is to stand in a room and take notes.''