Dear researchers,
Please help me with this issue.
I used Delvetool.com to analyse my qualitative data after I found my edited transcripts were lost in Nvivo and no cause could be found for it. I also felt that Nvivo is quite complicated to use, while Delve is much more straightforward. However, the ethics committee at my university had never heard of Delve before and raised a concern to me about the data storage in Delve. Delve uses 3rd party processors, which means that the data uploaded in Delve is stored in a number of external servers. Delve developers argued that they have listed all 3rd party processors on their website and they are all well-known and trusted (https://delvetool.com/subprocessors).
I have searched and found a few publicated papers that used Delve for thematic analysis. It is really hard for me to go back and use Nvivo now. Could you please advise me if there would be serious ethics concerns to uploading data into Delve and using it for thematic analysis?
Thanks a lot!
Sincerely,
Siying
It sounds like the basic issue is the security of data, and whether you used aa thematic analysis etc. is not really relevant.
As far as I can tell, Delve its a "cloud-based" analysis system, so a likely comparison is to Dedoose, which was the first program to use this technology. I read over both of their privacy policies, and one thing that I noticed is that Dedoose explicitly states that it stores your all information in an encrypted format, while I did not find any such statement from Delve.
So, I think you should contact Delve, tell them your ethics committee has a concern about data security, and in particular ask whether they store your data in an encrypted format.
After conversations with the ethics committee, IT services, and statistician at my university, I got a one-time permit to use Delve.com for my study as long as I de-identified my participants. It is mainly approved because my data aren't high-risk like medical or security information.
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