Protection of Data and Ethics
An essential part of this research is the support of the Human Subjects Internal Review Board at Davidson College (learn more). I submitted a protocol to this board in January 2023 with information about my advisors, consent for my research participants, data protections, and more.
To protect the data, I am employing technologies such as data encryption, a virtual private network, and the storing data in secure clouds.
Oral consent script: Hello, my name is Mattie Baird, and I am the principal investigator on a study about transgender and queer identities in Spain. I am an undergraduate student at Davidson College in North Carolina in the U.S. The study I am leading involves research. The purpose of the research is to examine the embodiment of gender identities in Spain. The benefits of participating in this study may include development of a more holistic understanding of yourself and your relationship to your gender and the gendered world around you, upon reflecting on and sharing your experience as it pertains to participating in research. There are no known risks associated with participation in this study. As with any social-scientific research, each individual's relationship with the world is unique and there are different "triggers" for negative psychological responses to participation in research. As a participant, you will be interviewed with a very open-ended structure about your experience with gender in the world around you. Participation in this study is completely voluntary and you may withdraw from the study at any time, including in the middle of this interview. Each participant will choose what and how much they want to share with me. You can always answer "I prefer not to answer," for example. I will record the audio of the interview to give me the ability to focus on the conversation here, now, and then transcribe and analyze the conversation. All information shared will be kept confidential. That is, nothing you say will be directly connected to your name and all recordings will be destroyed 3 years after I complete this investigation, in 2028. My supervising entities are Davidson College HSIRB (hsirb@davidson.edu), Dr. Angela Willis (anwillis@davidson.edu) and Dr. Melissa Gonzalez (megonzalez@davidson.edu). Do you have any questions I can answer? Do I have your consent to participate in this study?
To learn more about my protocols for protecting data and ethical research practice, please send me a message on the contact page.