Research ethics and Google Forms/Survey Monkey I am currently an MBA student in a college in Western Europe. As part of our thesis, we need to do a piece of original research (fairly standard, I would assume). I had planned on using either Google Forms or Survey Monkey to collect the data from respondents. Apparently, the college is not happy that I use these tools, and would prefer for me to use in person interviews. This is problematical as I had hoped for a few hundred responses, which is obviously not possible to do in person.

As part of a compromise with the college, they have asked for additional ethics data on security of data, as well as ethics guidelines from other 3rd level educational institutions. A Google search does not bring up any ethical guidelines on using either tool for educational research. 

My two questions are:

1) Is this a standard request, or should both of these tools be standard use for this process?
2) Are there any 3rd level educational instutions that have published ethical guidelines on the use of either Google Forms or Survey Monkey?
In Australia, human research is conducted under the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research [1] released by the National Health and Medical Research Council in 2007. Since the National Statement was released, the use of online survey tools has ballooned and Human Research Ethics Committees have been forced to acknowledge their use in research projects.

I am aware that Swinburne University has released advice to its staff about the use of the platform [2]. In addition, several other universities such as Deakin and Monash require that (1) the option to collect IP addresses be disabled and (2) that the recruitment of participants be undertaken outside of the SurveyMonkey platform (that is, cut and paste the survey link onto an email that you distribute separately from outside SurveyMonkey.)

You should note that SurveyMonkey itself has sought to address its relationship to HREC and IRB requirements [3].

I hope this help, despite the more than 18-month delay in my response.

Perhaps you can update us about your experience, thereby closing the loop somewhat.