Ethical and legal guidelines in data sharing

Data management is essential to make sure that well-organised, well-documented, high quality and shareable research data can be produced from our research projects. A key data management component is considering the ethical and legal issues of collecting, using and/or sharing data.

Researchers obtaining or using data obtained from people are expected to maintain high ethical standards and comply with the relevant legislation. Much research data - even sensitive data - can be shared ethically and legally. This session will focus on key ethical and legal guidelines researchers should consider when working with data collected from human participants.

During this free 90-minute online workshop, participants will learn about the relevant data protection legislation, such as the Data Protection Act and the UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR). Participants will also learn about strategies that enable ethical and legal data sharing. These include obtaining informed consent, treating the data for example by anonymisation, and licensing data and controlling access.

The workshop will conclude with a dedicated Q&A session.

Presenter: Dr Hina Zahid. Hina has done a PhD in Health Psychology from the University of Essex. She currently works as a Senior Research Data Services Officer at the UK Data Archive, University of Essex. She provides guidance and training on ethical and legal issues related to data management and data sharing in order to promote good data practices in research and to optimise data sharing opportunities.

Level: Introductory

Experience/knowledge required: Basic research ethics and understanding of data privacy concepts recommended but not required.

Target audience: Academic and non-academic data professionals such as researchers, academic staff, ethics committee members, data managers, data stewards and others keen on navigating the ethical and legal frameworks of data management.

This event will be livestreamed on our UK Data Service YouTube channel but the chat will be disabled. By registering and attending the Zoom event you will be able to ask questions and interact.

Recordings of UK Data Service events are made available on our YouTube channel and, together with the slides, on our past events pages soon after the event has taken place.

This event is part of our UK Data Service introductory training series: Autumn 2025.