Introduction

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Introduction#

During your thesis project or a course assignment, do you plan to collect or re-use any data that originated from humans? That means that you will be dealing with personal research data, and you must follow certain legal and ethical guidelines. This training is meant for you! This module will support you during the planning phase of your research. That way you can plan ahead to ensure that all personal data will be handled in a safe and ethical manner.

Learning Goals by Section#

By participating in this module, you will learn how to:

Section

Topics

Section I

Recognize personal data. Recognize types of data that carry increased risk.

Section II

Identify potential risks to human participants. Explain how to mitigate these risks.

Section III

Explain key components of TU Delft’s Human Research Ethics Committee’s application process.

Format of This Mini-module#

This mini-module is online and self-paced. It will take you 20-40 minutes to go through the materials. The quizzes at the end of each section are optional. The quizzes will add a few extra minutes to the total time it takes to complete the module. The module has an open format, which means you can bookmark the url in your browser and refer to the information in the future.

Scope#

Please note, these educational materials are meant to teach basic concepts and processes that are required at TU Delft in advance of working with personal research data. More complex cases, such as projects involving special categories of personal data, the ones conducted within large research consortia, or projects carried out abroad, are NOT covered in detail in this module. For these, we will provide links to more in-depth resources.

Attribution#

This pilot material was developed in collaboration between Narmin Rzayeva (TU Delft Research Data & Software training team), Paige Folsom (Data Literacy Project @ TU Delft Library Education Support), and TU Delft data stewards Janine Strandberg and Nicolas Dintzner. Thank you to Paula Martinez Lavanchy for consultating on the development of these materials, to Thijs Slot for giving feedback about the HREC workflow and flowchart, and to Joost Barendse for sharing expertise about the TU Delft personal research data workflow. Appreciation to Guilherme Ferreira Sêco de Alvarenga for assisting in the creation of the Jupyter book. And special thanks to the piloting coordinators, instructors, and students of TIL5055 for their partnership.

How to Cite This Resource#

Folsom, P., Ryazeva, N., Strandberg, J., Dintzner, N. (2025) MSc Planning for Personal Data Mini-module. <https://tu-delft-library.github.io/MSc-Planning-for-Personal-Data/main/introduction/introduction.html>. Source files at <https://github.com/TUDelft-books/MSc-Planning-for-Personal-Data>. CC BY 4.0.

Contents