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Maybe you’re interested in your school participating in our research, or maybe you’re thinking of giving permission for your child to take part in a study that will take place at your school or home. Here is a brief information on our project and its key ethical guidelines.
First of all, it is important to note that our project is only for scientific purposes: our studies are not for commercial purposes. Our research is always submitted first to the permission of the Ethics Committee of the University Adolfo Ibáñez, who judge whether the research is in accordance with Chilean ethical guidelines for scientific and social research.
When the UAI Ethics Commission approves our study, we still cannot start our research. First, we make sure that schools that want to participate in our study get all the necessary information about the procedure. Once the Schools have accepted, we only ask for consent from parents or educators. We also ensure that parents or caregivers know exactly what will happen to their children’s research data and how we guarantee their privacy. A child may participate only when both the School and parents or caregivers agree.
When we start a study, our participants are always informed about what they can expect when they decide to participate. Children may always decide not to participate in the investigation if they deem it necessary. We always confirm with them before and repeat this question before starting a study. Only once we are absolutely sure that a child or adolescent wants to participate in our research does the data collection really start. At the end of a study, we always tell children what research is exactly about, and we tell them what social robots really are and how they work.
It’s important that you know that we treat all our research data completely confidentially and in accordance with Chilean privacy rules. In particular, all data from our participants is kept anonymous: we keep these data so that no one will be able to track them down to specific children. In sum: we’re interested in the overall average of responses, we never focus on specific cases.
Do you have any more questions? Or are you considering that this School participates in our research? Great! On our contact contact page you can find out how to contact us.
Disclaimer: The text, ethical guidelines and procedures listed above are inspired by those of the mentoring project CHILDROBOT, at the University of Amsterdam , for which we obtained permission.
