scholarly journals Open Humans: A platform for participant-centered research and personal data exploration

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bastian Greshake Tzovaras ◽  
Misha Angrist ◽  
Kevin Arvai ◽  
Mairi Dulaney ◽  
Vero Estrada-Galiñanes ◽  
...  

AbstractBackgroundMany aspects of our lives are now digitized and connected to the internet. As a result, individuals are now creating and collecting more personal data than ever before. This offers an unprecedented chance for human-participant research ranging from the social sciences to precision medicine. With this potential wealth of data come practical problems (such as how to merge data streams from various sources), as well as ethical problems (such as how to best balance risks and benefits when enabling personal data sharing by individuals).ResultsTo begin to address these problems in real time, we present Open Humans, a community-based platform that enables personal data collections across data streams, giving individuals more personal data access and control of sharing authorizations, and enabling academic research as well as patient-led projects. We showcase data streams that Open Humans combines (e.g. personal genetic data, wearable activity monitors, GPS location records and continuous glucose monitor data), along with use cases of how the data facilitates various projects.ConclusionsOpen Humans highlights how a community-centric ecosystem can be used to aggregate personal data from various sources as well as how these data can be used by academic and citizen scientists through practical, iterative approaches to sharing that strive to balance considerations with participant autonomy, inclusion, and privacy.

Author(s):  
Ekaterina Pshehotskaya ◽  
Oleg Mikhalsky

This article is concerned with the arising problems and implications of physical security and privacy of personal and control data on portable computer devices, especially smartphones. The authors consider various classifications of portable computer devices, isolate smartphones as a most common device, and study types of user behavior regarding the involved security risks of unauthorized access to the data stored both locally and remotely with accent of physical data access via device theft. Based on provided categorization the researchers discuss the factors and criteria suitable to generalize user patterns and evaluate the corresponding vulnerability level against specified statistics. The considered statistical criteria can be formulated as a mathematical model of relative risks and implemented as a service or an application to be used for improving user awareness on current threats to his personal data and respective interconnected personal portable devices.


Author(s):  
Chris C. Demchak ◽  
Kurt D. Fenstermacher

This chapter explores the roles of names and name equivalents in social tracking and control, reviews the amount of privacy-sensitive databases accumulating today in U.S. legacy federal systems, and proposes an alternative that reduces the likelihood of new security policies violating privacy. We focus on the continuing public-authority reliance on unique identifiers, for example, names or national identity numbers, for services and security instead of dissecting a better indicator of security threats found in behavior data. We conclude with a proposed conceptual change to focusing the social-order mission on the behavior of individuals rather than their identities (behavior-identity knowledge model, BIK). It is particularly urgent to consider a different path now as increased interest in biometrics offers an insidious expansion of unique identifiers of highly personal data. E-government can be wonderful for central government’s effectiveness and efficiency in delivering services while also being a disaster for both privacy and security if not regulated legally, institutionally, and technically (with validation and appeal processes) from the outset.


2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Lei Huang ◽  
Yandong Zhao ◽  
Guangxi He ◽  
Yangxu Lu ◽  
Juanjuan Zhang ◽  
...  

PurposeThe online platform is one of the essential components of the platform economy that is constructed by a large scale of the personal data resource. However, accurate empirical test of the competition structure of the data-driven online platform is still less. This research is trying to reveal market allocation structure of the personal data resource of China's car-hailing platforms competition by the empirical data analysis.Design/methodology/approachThis research is applying the social network analysis by R packages, which include k-core decomposition and multilevel community detection from the data connectedness via the decompilation and the examination of the application programming interface of terminal applications.FindingsThis research has found that the car-hailing platforms, which establish more constant personal data connectedness and connectivity with social media platforms, are taking the competitive market advantage within the sample network. Data access discrimination is a complementary method of market power in China's car-hailing industry.Research limitations/implicationsThis research offers a new perspective on the analysis of the multi-sided market from the personal data resource allocation mechanism of the car-hailing platform. However, the measurement of the data connectedness requires more empirical industry data.Practical implicationsThis research reveals the competition structure that relies on personal data resource allocation mechanism. It offers empirical evidence for governance, which is considered as the critical issue of big data research, by reviewing the nature of the data network.Social implicationsIt also reveals the data convergence process of the social system and the technological system.Originality/valueThis research offers a new research method for the real-time regulation of the car-hailing platform.


2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Claire Segijn ◽  
Joanna Strycharz ◽  
Amy Riegelman ◽  
Cody Hennesy

<p>Through various online activities, individuals produce large amounts of data that are collected by companies for the purpose of providing users with personalized communication. In the light of this mass collection of personal data, the transparency and control paradigm for personalized communication has led to increased attention of legislators and academics. However, in the scientific literature no clear definition of personalization transparency and control exists, which could lead to reliability and validity issues, impeding knowledge accumulation in academic research. In a literature review, we analyzed 31 articles and we observed that 1) no clear definitions of personalization transparency or control exist, 2) they are used interchangeably in the literature, 3) collection, processing, and sharing of data are the three objects of transparency and control, and 4) increased transparency does not automatically increase control because first awareness needs to be raised in the individual. Also, the relationship between awareness and control depends on the ability and the desire to control. This study contributes to the field of algorithmic communication by creating a common understanding of the transparency and control paradigm and thus improves validity of the results. Further, it progresses research on the issue by synthesizing existing studies on the topic, presenting the Transparency-Awareness-Control framework, and formulating propositions to guide future research.</p>


2011 ◽  
pp. 3060-3073
Author(s):  
Chris C. Demchak ◽  
Kurt D. Fenstermacher

This chapter explores the roles of names and name equivalents in social tracking and control, reviews the amount of privacy-sensitive databases accumulating today in U.S. legacy federal systems, and proposes an alternative that reduces the likelihood of new security policies violating privacy. We focus on the continuing public-authority reliance on unique identifiers, for example, names or national identity numbers, for services and security instead of dissecting a better indicator of security threats found in behavior data. We conclude with a proposed conceptual change to focusing the social-order mission on the behavior of individuals rather than their identities (behavior-identity knowledge model, BIK). It is particularly urgent to consider a different path now as increased interest in biometrics offers an insidious expansion of unique identifiers of highly personal data. E-government can be wonderful for central government’s effectiveness and efficiency in delivering services while also being a disaster for both privacy and security if not regulated legally, institutionally, and technically (with validation and appeal processes) from the outset.


Author(s):  
Ekaterina Pshehotskaya ◽  
Oleg Mikhalsky

This article is concerned with the arising problems and implications of physical security and privacy of personal and control data on portable computer devices, especially smartphones. The authors consider various classifications of portable computer devices, isolate smartphones as a most common device, and study types of user behavior regarding the involved security risks of unauthorized access to the data stored both locally and remotely with accent of physical data access via device theft. Based on provided categorization the researchers discuss the factors and criteria suitable to generalize user patterns and evaluate the corresponding vulnerability level against specified statistics. The considered statistical criteria can be formulated as a mathematical model of relative risks and implemented as a service or an application to be used for improving user awareness on current threats to his personal data and respective interconnected personal portable devices.


2012 ◽  
Vol 2012 (1) ◽  
pp. 163-192
Author(s):  
Sonja Rinofner-Kreidl

Autonomy is associated with intellectual self-preservation and self-determination. Shame, on the contrary, bears a loss of approval, self-esteem and control. Being afflicted with shame, we suffer from social dependencies that by no means have been freely chosen. Moreover, undergoing various experiences of shame, our power of reflection turns out to be severly limited owing to emotional embarrassment. In both ways, shame seems to be bound to heteronomy. This situation strongly calls for conceptual clarification. For this purpose, we introduce a threestage model of self-determination which comprises i) autonomy as capability of decision-making relating to given sets of choices, ii) self-commitment in terms of setting and harmonizing goals, and iii) self-realization in compliance with some range of persistently approved goals. Accordingly, the presuppositions and distinctive marks of shame-experiences are made explicit. Within this framework, we explore the intricate relation between autonomy and shame by focusing on two questions: on what conditions could conventional behavior be considered as self-determined? How should one characterize the varying roles of actors that are involved in typical cases of shame-experiences? In this connection, we advance the thesis that the social dynamics of shame turns into ambiguous positions relating to motivation, intentional content,and actors’ roles.


Author(s):  
Mats Alvesson ◽  
Yiannis Gabriel ◽  
Roland Paulsen

This chapter introduces ‘the problem’ of meaningless research in the social sciences. Over the past twenty years there has been an enormous growth in research publications, but never before in the history of humanity have so many social scientists written so much to so little effect. Academic research in the social sciences is often inward looking, addressed to small tribes of fellow researchers, and its purpose in what is increasingly a game is that of getting published in a prestigious journal. A wide gap has emerged between the esoteric concerns of social science researchers and the pressing issues facing today’s societies. The chapter critiques the inaccessibility of the language used by academic researchers, and the formulaic qualities of most research papers, fostered by the demands of the publishing game. It calls for a radical move from research for the sake of publishing to research that has something meaningful to say.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Huoyin Zhang ◽  
Shiyunmeng Zhang ◽  
Jiachen Lu ◽  
Yi Lei ◽  
Hong Li

AbstractPrevious studies in humans have shown that brain regions activating social exclusion overlap with those related to attention. However, in the context of social exclusion, how does behavioral monitoring affect individual behavior? In this study, we used the Cyberball game to induce the social exclusion effect in a group of participants. To explore the influence of social exclusion on the attention network, we administered the Attention Network Test (ANT) and compared results for the three subsystems of the attention network (orienting, alerting, and executive control) between exclusion (N = 60) and inclusion (N = 60) groups. Compared with the inclusion group, the exclusion group showed shorter overall response time and better executive control performance, but no significant differences in orienting or alerting. The excluded individuals showed a stronger ability to detect and control conflicts. It appears that social exclusion does not always exert a negative influence on individuals. In future research, attention to network can be used as indicators of social exclusion. This may further reveal how social exclusion affects individuals' psychosomatic mechanisms.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
N.I. Fisher ◽  
D.J. Trewin

Given the high level of global mobility, pandemics are likely to be more frequent, and with potentially devastating consequences for our way of life. With COVID-19, Australia is in relatively better shape than most other countries and is generally regarded as having managed the pandemic well. That said, we believe there is a critical need to start the process of learning from this pandemic to improve the quantitative information and related advice provided to policy makers. A dispassionate assessment of Australia’s health and economic response to the COVID-19 pandemic reveals some important inadequacies in the data, statistical analysis and interpretation used to guide Australia’s preparations and actions. For example, one key shortcoming has been the lack of data to obtain an early understanding of the extent of asymptomatic and mildly symptomatic cases or the differences across age groups, occupations or ethnic groups. Minimising the combined health, social and economic impacts of a novel virus depends critically on ongoing acquisition, integration, analysis, interpretation and presentation of a variety of data streams to inform the development, execution and monitoring of appropriate strategies. The article captures the essential quantitative components of such an approach for each of the four basic phases, from initial detection to post-pandemic. It also outlines the critical steps in each stage to enable policy makers to deal more efficiently and effectively with future such events, thus enhancing both the social and the economic welfare of its people. Although written in an Australian context, we believe most elements would apply to other countries as well.


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