IT solutions for sensitive data
It's most common during research to handle digital data in one way or another, requiring collection, storage, analysis, transfer, and/or archiving. When conducting research with sensitive data, carefully design your research and implement extra data protection measures.
The University of Groningen offers an IT infrastructure to support these tasks. This page provides guidance on selecting appropriate IT solutions and using standard options for managing sensitive data.
Use of commercial software
Using software or solutions provided by commercial companies to process your research data can be very attractive. Unfortunately, those solutions do not usually consider the interest of the researcher and/or the participants. Ensuring that your data is going to be used for research purposes only becomes a hard task without a clear and strict service agreement.
Some commercial software is essential for research conducted at the UG. For that reason, the UG has contract agreements with several companies, such as Qualtrics and ATLAS.ti. These software packages can be used by researchers under the terms and conditions that have been agreed upon in the licensing contracts. Use the UG software finder to have an overview of the software available to all UG researchers.
Research software request
If you need specific software for your research that is not (yet) available, you can request this software via IRIS. Keep in mind that the usefulness of the software is not the only factor in the decision to grant your request. Costs and available alternatives, as well as privacy and security concerns also factor into this decision. This means that the assessment process could take some time. Check the list of available software for similar solutions or consult with a data steward.
Last modified: | 24 September 2024 12.26 p.m. |