Best practices for studies using digital data donation

Abstract

Data donation forms an innovative and ethical approach to collection of digital trace data. It relies on the EU legislation around personal data, which mandates data controllers to provide data subjects with a copy on personal data collected on them upon request. Participants in data donation studies can request a data controller (e.g. online platform) for a copy of their digital trace data, and actively consent to donate (part of this) data to a researcher. Setting up a data donation study involves a lot of steps and considerations, which all can threaten the study quality if executed poorly. In this paper, a workflow for setting up a data donation study is introduced. This workflow is based on error sources identified in the Total Error Framework for data donation by Boeschoten and colleagues (2022), as well as experiences in earlier data donation studies by the authors. The workflow is discussed in detail and linked to challenges and considerations for each step. All steps are illustrated by three previous studies on data donation. The paper aims to provide guidelines and a starting point for researchers wanting to conduct a data donation study.