Longform recordings of everyday life: Ethics for best practices

Abstract

Recent advances in large-scale data storage and processing offer unprecedented opportunities for behavioral scientists to collect and analyze naturalistic data, including from underrepresented groups. Audio data, particularly real-world audio recordings, are of particular interest to behavioral scientists because they provide high-fidelity access to subtle aspects of daily life and social interactions. However, these methodological advances pose novel risks to research participants and communities. In this article, we outline the benefits and challenges associated with collecting, analyzing, and sharing multi-hour audio recording data. Guided by the principles of autonomy, privacy, beneficence, and justice, we propose a set of ethical guidelines for the use of longform audio recordings in behavioral research. This article is also accompanied by an Open Science Framework Ethics Repository that includes informed consent resources such as frequent participant concerns and sample consent forms.

The role of caregiver speech in supporting language development in infants and toddlers with autism spectrum disorder

“…The benefits to this research strategy are outlined above, but there are also limitations and unique considerations to consider when using this approach. For a comprehensive guide to collecting day-long home language recordings and the ethics of such data collection we refer the reader to Casillas and Cristia (2019) and Cychosz et al (2020), respectively. We review some of these practical and ethical considerations below.…”

Analysis of children’s everyday language experiences using longform audio: promises and pitfalls (Análisis de las experiencias lingüísticas cotidianas de niños y niñas utilizando audio de formato largo: posibles ventajas y dificultades)

“…They also discuss in detail issues of consent, data storage and sharing. Cychosz, Romeo et al (2020) dig much deeper into the many ethical considerations faced by researchers engaging with longform audio, particularly as the research community moves towards the more open sharing of data and collaborative projects. These audio files by design capture the intimate details of people's lives, and may include incidental recording of third parties who may or may not have awareness or consent for their voice to be recorded or shared.…”

Sensing everyday activity: Parent perceptions and feasibility

“…However, researchers should be aware of the limitations of such automated models. Automated activity recognition has the potential for misclassification (Kwon et al, 2019;Cristia et al, 2020), including for example, due to noise from caregiver activity (Worobey et al, 2009;Zhou et al, 2019) or the presence of other children (Cristia et al, 2018). These more specialized activity recognition algorithms are typically developed with small convenience samples in "clean" laboratory conditions, and thus SENSING EVERYDAY ACTIVITY: PARENT PERCEPTIONS AND FEASIBILITY 9 need additional work to be validated for use in real-world scenarios (Lockhart & Weiss, 2014;de Barbaro, 2019).…”

“…In particular, home activities can be highly personal and intimate in nature and individuals generally expect high levels of privacy at home (Shapiro, 1998). Additionally, recording children's activity in the home may present additional privacy concerns for parents, such as the desire to protect their children from harms related to breaches of sensitive data (Acquisti et al, 2015).While the potential for such concerns has been acknowledged as an important issue for developmental science research (Cychosz et al, 2020), we know of no studies that have systematically examined parents' concerns and willingness to SENSING EVERYDAY ACTIVITY: PARENT PERCEPTIONS AND FEASIBILITY 11 have their children participate in sensing research across a variety of sensors and privacy scenarios. We identified two previous studies regarding acceptability of the LENA, both with small samples of participants (N>=5) who already provided consent to collect and share LENA data (Allen et al, 2017;Choo et al, 2017), meaning that these studies don't speak to the acceptability of audio recording (or other sensors) in the general population.…”