Ethics
As a volunteer and participant in our experiments we are both grateful to you, and more importantly obliged to provide every protection possible to you. This research is conducted in accordance with the British Psychological Society's Code of Conduct . In a nutshell this means for you:
- Withdrawing from the Experiment : You have the right to withdraw at any point. If you don't like the WebRadio, or don't like being logged, just stop using it and uninstall it from your computer. You have absolutely no obligation to continue.
- Anonymous Double Blind Design : All recorded data (both questionnaire and interaction logs) is stored in our database under a randomly generated 8 character hexadecimal code. Neither we the experimenters nor you (or anyone else) is able to determine who you are from your data.
- Application Specific Recording : Data is only logged in relation to the WebRadio application. The WebRadio CANNOT log anything else about your system, only the clicks that relate to the WebRadio application and the radio stations that you choose to select and play.
- Transparency and Availability of Logged Data : all interaction data is stored locally on your hard drive first and then transmitted to the ProSkin database using your Internet connection. You are free to open and look at the data that is there to send to us. As you'll see there is nothing sent that isn't a click or radio station. Furthermore, because we have nothing to hide, the source code (.NET) is available for inspection should you want to take a look under the hood for yourself.
Note: You are free to leave the experiment at any time and are under no obligation to continue should you not want to. All you have to do is to uninstall the application and all ProSkin logging will be stopped. However, I would strongly encourage you to use the WebRadio for the four week period so that we can get the best data possible.