Big Data and the Ethical Implications of Data Privacy in Higher Education Research

Diana Florea and Silvia Florea
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Diana Florea: Faculty of Letters and Arts, Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, 550024 Sibiu, Romania
Silvia Florea: UNESCO Chair in Quality Management of Higher Education and Lifelong Learning, Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu, 550024 Sibiu, Romania

Sustainability, 2020, vol. 12, issue 20, 1-11

Abstract: Despite the claimed worth and huge interest regarding the increasing volumes of complex data sets and the rewarding promise to improve research, there is, however, a growing concern regarding data privacy that affects both qualitative and quantitative higher education research. Within the contemporary debates on the impact of Big Data on the nature of higher education research and the effective ways to harmonize Big Data practice with privacy restrictions and regulations, this study sets out to qualitatively examine current issues regarding data privacy, anonymity, informed consent and confidentiality in data-centric higher education research, with a focus on the data collector, data subject and data user. We argue that within current regulations, data protection of research subjects concerns more data collection and disclosure and insufficiently describes use, having procedural implications for both the complex nature of higher education (HE) research and the type of research data being collected. We work our argument through an examination of several factors that call for a reconsideration of data privacy and access to private information in HE research. The conclusions indicate that Big Data-centric HE research is increasingly becoming a mainstream research paradigm which needs to address critical data privacy issues before being widely embraced.

Keywords: Big Data; privacy; higher education; research; ethics (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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