For any research project in which individuals are interviewed, observed, or tested, the issues of data protection and ethics are of utmost importance. Therefore, it is necessary to continuously examine your research project regarding these requirements. In most cases, personal information is collected in or for empirical research. This may be personal information such as name(s), gender, age, but also video or audio recordings of those individuals. According to the data economy principle (Datensparsamkeitsgebot), you should collect as little data as possible, and only those pieces of personal information that are needed to answer your research question.

The collection and storage of such personal data must comply with the strictest ethical and legal criteria.

These are the core concerns of the Datenschutzbeauftragten der UPB (UPB data protection officers) and the Ethik-Kommission der UPB (UPB ethics committee).

Information on data protection and ethics through UPB-websites

The department of psychology provides important aspects for working with people and personal data in qualification work (such as a PhD or Master’s thesis). You will find a sample text for an informed consent as well as a checklist to examine whether ethical aspects are addressed properly in your project/qualification work.

The FiPS blog addresses UPB students within their school internship semester that are enrolled in the teacher education (TE) program. As a TE student, you will find an entry that briefly and concisely presents the basic principles of data protection law and research ethics in empirical research (only available in German).

You can also find a template for an informed consent for a research project that involves working with or collecting data of children (only available in German).

Further Information (external websites)

The German Network of Educational Research Data (Verbund Forschungsdaten Bildung) offers a comprehensive overview of how to work with data collected in research and provides detailed information on legal and ethical aspects. Here you can also find information on the specifics for research at schools in the different federal states of Germany (only available in German).

Forschungswerkstatt Erziehungswissenschaft (only available in German): Offers workshops and events on various topics regarding empirical and methodological issues for doctoral candidates of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities.

Contact: Dr. Annette Bentler

Research College for Empirical Educational Research (Forschungskolleg Empirische Bildungsforschung), (PLAZ) (only available in German)

Contact: Dr. Andreas Seifert.

Some departments or research groups offer internal colloquia that support doctoral candidates with their empirical projects. During those colloquia, doctoral candidates can present and discuss their projects at any state of their progress. Please contact your supervisor or the chair of your department for further information or the availability of these colloquia for your field/department.

Annotation/transcription software

The webblog lingutools (only available in German) offers a comprehensible overview of common tools for linguistic annotation and corpus analysis. It also lists possible advantages and disadvantages of these tools.

EXMARaLDA and ELAN (both freeware for Windows, Mac and Linux) allow detailed transcription and (also complex) annotation of audio and video files. Both are especially suitable for detailed analyses of linguistic and other behavior.

BORIS (freeware for Windows, Mac and Linux) allows annotation and analysis of video files.

f4 or f5 (paid software for Windows, Mac and Linux) allows for relatively easy transcription of audio and video files. This software is particularly suitable for content analyses.

Praat (freeware for Windows, Mac and Linux) enables detailed (phonetic) analysis and annotation of audio files.

Statistics

R, JASP (both freeware for Windows, Mac and Linux) and SPSS (paid software for Windows, Mac and Linux, UPB students can get campus licenses allow detailed statistical analysis of quantitative data.

For purely descriptive statistics, Excel (available via campus license for UPB members) or well-known freeware alternatives are also suitable.

Other

MAXQDA is a paid annotation software for qualitative data analysis.

CLARIN-D is a digital research infrastructure software for language resources in the fields of humanities and social sciences. It offers various (i.a.) tools for analyzing language data.