“Covidata” & Fatigue
Drs. Donnelly and Hinson read this article from RTE about the ethics of feeding the world’s insatiable need for data and answers during these perilous times. While the article focuses on mental health research – which Abbey Research does not conduct – it provided some good food for thought. A core of our ethical stance is the belief that research should never harm, is asking questions right now innately harmful?
The short answer is: no.
The longer answer is: we must always make sure to let people know up front what the research is for, and that they have the ability to exit the research at any time. If any questions are of a personal nature which may trigger the respondents into a negative emotional reaction, that should be clear from the get go.
As CRI launches and continues to conduct research, any participants and community members can rest assured that we take the idea of harm seriously.
“Our focus on practical solutions for small businesses helps us here – our threshold for statistical significance is lower than, say, Gallup’s or Pew’s.”
Now, one of the other points of the article was about “covidata” fatigue and we recognize we may be contributing to that. We hope that anyone who feels that way will simply delete the survey or chose not to participate. However, in adjusting for that reality, we are also confident that the data we do collect will be helpful. Our focus on practical solutions for small businesses helps us here – our threshold for statistical significance is lower than, say, Gallup’s or Pew’s. We can extrapolate quicker and get you pragmatic solutions – which is exactly what we’re setting out to do.