On this page you will find instructions on how to fill in the Laurea Data Management Plan template. The guide will work for both the Bachelor's and Master's degree thesis material management plan. First read the guide and then use it to create the actual data management plan. You can check some of the points in this guide as you write your plan. Laurean aineistonhallintasuunnitelmapohjat löytyvät täältä.
Make a list or table of the data in your work and its characteristics. If you use existing material, follow the terms of use of the material and cite the origin, authors and sources in accordance with good research practice and in compliance with the law. Existing material can be, for example, questionnaires, interviews, samples, images or code collected/produced by someone else. Not all sources you refer to in your work will be described here.
What to do:
What the material in a thesis can be:
Tips:
In the plan, briefly describe how you will ensure that the data is not inadvertently altered and that the original data content is preserved. Describe how the data will remain error-free throughout its life cycle, e.g. when converting or transferring data or files from systems or during analysis.
Tips:
The key point of the data management plan is point two: Ethical principles, legislation and processing of personal data. It therefore contains a lot of guidance and is broken down into more detailed sections.
If your material contains personal data, you must comply with EU data protection rules and the Finnish Data Protection Act.
Personal data are data that allow a person to be identified, directly or indirectly, for example by combining data. Personal data can be direct (e.g. name, personal identification number, e-mail address, telephone number) or indirect (e.g. image, voice, a particular feature or even a particular hobby). For more information on personal data, see the Laurea guidelines.
If your data contains sensitive personal data or other data that may pose risks to individuals, you may need to prepare a Data Protection Impact Assessment (DPIA). If applicable, describe how you will assess the necessity of the personal data you collect and how you will prevent risks related to the processing of personal data.
Sensitive data are various types of information that can reveal the identity of a person by their:
Tips:
If the thesis material contains personal data, the material is a personal register for which a controller must be defined. The controller is the person or organisation that determines for what purpose and in what way personal data are processed. Please ensure that the controller and the processing of personal data are agreed with the organisation, where appropriate.
Please explain here who is the controller of the thesis data and on what basis. Read more about data controllership here.
Instructions:
If your material contains personal data, you must prepare a privacy notice explaining what personal data you process and how you do it, as well as the basis for the processing.
If data are collected from subjects or they otherwise participate in the study, a research note and informed consent are always required (section 2.4). Consent is usually requested in writing and in some cases orally as part of the interview. If the data are collected by questionnaire, the first question of the questionnaire concerns informed consent.
If the processing of personal data is based on consent, consent must also be sought for the processing of personal data as part of the participant's consent. Click here to find out more about what is meant by grounds for processing.
Describe here what data protection documents and practices are needed for your study and how you will implement them. Make use of Laurea's 1) privacy notice template and 2) consent form.
When people participate in the thesis, for example in an interview, observation, survey or workshop, they are informed about the thesis and their contribution to it. They will also be informed if the thesis material will be further used or stored in a data archive. Participants must be asked to give their consent to participate and to the processing of their personal data.
Make use of Laurea's privacy notice and consent forms where appropriate.
If the subject of the research is an organisation, its activities or its representatives, such as staff or students, you must ask the organisation for permission. Research authorisation is sought from the organisation from which the subjects will be recruited. This means that permission must be sought, for example, when studying Laurea students or colleagues at your own workplace. It should also be noted that, even if the organisation grants permission, each subject decides for him/herself and gives his/her consent personally.
For research permits, the host organisation's policies are followed and the student is responsible for obtaining the research permit. Be aware that obtaining a research permit may take time. A research authorisation usually requires a research and data management plan and a personal data form.
A Laurea research permit is required when the research concerns
Whenever the research concerns either Laurea as an organisation, Laurea students or staff, or some of them, a research permit is required from Laurea. tutkimuslupa Laureasta. The application for a research permit should be sent to researchpermit@laurea.fi. Please read and follow the guidelines for research authorisation ohjeistukseen and submit the research authorisation when it is ready for processing. Note: A research plan must be attached to the research permit application! If you are processing student or teacher email addresses, for example to send a survey or an invitation to an interview, please also complete the privacy section on the third page. Also make sure that your supervisor has checked the application before sending it.
From 1 October 2024, students' research permit applications require the signature of the supervisor. With his/her signature, the supervisor confirms that he/she has read and accepted the student's application and the required attachments. The signature of the supervisor may be electronic.
Find out whether your thesis is a research design that requires ethical prior checking. The HTK 2023 guidelines do not recommend that theses with a research design that requires ethical review should be submitted.
Laurea's Bachelor's theses cannot include research that would require an ethical review.
If the research design of the Master's thesis, as approved by the Master's thesis supervisor, requires an ethical review, the thesis student must apply for an ethical review together with the supervisor and the person responsible for the project/research related to the thesis.
If necessary, the Master's thesis student and the supervisor jointly apply for a preliminary research ethical review from the Human Sciences Ethics Committee of the Helsinki Region Universities of Applied Sciences using the form provided by the Committee. The application must clearly identify the research ethics issues for which a review is sought. A thesis involving such a research design cannot proceed until an ethical review has been completed.
Ethical review is needed in the following settings:
participation in research is a departure from the principle of informed consent,
the bodily integrity of the subjects is compromised,
the research involves subjects under the age of 15 without the specific consent of the guardian, or without informing the guardian enabling them to refuse the child's participation in the research,
the participants are subjected to exceptionally strong stimuli,
the research could risk causing psychological harm to subjects or their loved ones that goes beyond the limits of normal daily life, or the conduct of the research may pose a threat to the safety of the subjects or the researcher or their loved ones (TENK: 2019).
If the subject of the research is sensitive or delicate, or if the handling of the subject may compromise the well-being of the research participants or the protection of privacy, an ethical review in the human sciences is often required.
An ethical review is always requested before starting a thesis or research project. Obtaining an ethical review requires careful reading of the guidelines, preparation of all the necessary documents, and some time. Organisations may have their own guidelines regarding the choice of thesis or research topic and the target audience. Please carefully read the guidelines of the Finnish National Board on Research Integrity (TENK). Ethical Review | Finnish National Board on Research Integrity (tenk.fi)
If you only use the data you collect to build up the results of your own thesis and do not share the data with others, you do not need to make an agreement on the rights to the data.
If the commissioner wants to use the material, an agreement must be made with the commissioner regarding the following:
During the thesis process, students can collect research material on which the thesis or the results of the thesis process are based. If the student provides the partner or the university of applied sciences with research material or rights to the research material collected, this will be agreed separately.
The student can grant 1) a parallel right to use the material, which means that the student always retains the right to use the result himself, regardless of the transfer. The assignable right of use includes, if expressly agreed:
The student can also 2) transfer ownership of the research material, which means that the collaborator owns the result (e.g. an object created as a 3D model) after the transfer and the student has no rights to the result afterwards, except the right to be credited as the author of the result as good practice requires. If the result involves an invention, the rights to the result will be agreed separately.
It is a good practice to document the material throughout the thesis process so that both you and others understand what the material is and how it can be used. Think about how, if necessary, you will recall even years later what your material consists of.
Can you describe what has happened to the data during research? Documenting the data is a key element in tracking changes made to the data. As a minimum, individual notes must be made of the steps taken to process the data. Describe the terms used, variable names, codes and abbreviations.
The documentation of the material describes how the thesis material was produced, what it contains and how it was processed. Without sufficiently detailed contextual information, research data are often useless.
You can use the following tools to document your data:
It is important to take care of the material throughout the thesis process. How do you keep your material organised and intact, and avoid unintentional changes to it?
For example, in a qualitative interview study, original material is the set of all transcribed interviews. When you analyse the data, different versions of it emerge. For example, thematisation produces one version of the data and should be recorded as a separate entity.
Tips for preserving the integrity of your data:
Ensure that the material is stored securely both during and after the thesis process and that the necessary backups are made. Note that using a secure network drive is a safer option than using a hard disk or USB stick. Do not store sensitive personal data or confidential information on public cloud services (e.g. Google Drive). Lue lisää Laurean suosittelemista tietoaineiston käsittelypaikoista täältä.
Saving and backing up data:
Describe where the material will be stored and how it will be backed up during the thesis process.
Tips:
The choice of a suitable storage for files is influenced by factors such as the size and nature of the files, as well as security considerations.
Security is particularly important when dealing with special categories of personal data or otherwise confidential data, such as trade secrets.
Aim to primarily use of the storage services provided by Laurea. Lue lisää Laurean suosittelemista tietoaineiston käsittelypaikoista täältä.
Control of access to data:
Explain who has access to your data, what they can do with it, and how you will ensure its secure transfer to your potential partners.
Note that when processing personal data, the privacy statement must list all processors and that viewing the data is also processing.
Tips:
Special attention must be paid to access control of sensitive data. If the collection of data is based on consent, access to and transfer of the data must be in accordance with the terms of the consent obtained from the respondent to the survey or interview.
Follow Laurea's data security and data protection guidelines, and use storage locations recommended by the university.
Prefer Laurea accounts rather than private accounts.
When the thesis is completed, the material and data collected during the thesis need to be processed in a planned way.
The following options are available:
Please note that the options are subject to conditions and responsibilities. Sometimes some part of data can be preserved and/or reused, some other part destroyed. For more guidance on how to handle the material once the thesis is completed, click here.
Destroy your thesis material in the following cases:
Tips for destroying material containing personal data:
Discuss the retention of your thesis data with your thesis supervisor and your thesis sponsor. Please note that if the material contains personally identifiable information (see section 2.1) or other content that prevents its preservation (e.g. trade secrets), you cannot keep it as is.
Subjects must be informed of any further use of the data before they are collected. The participants must be informed in an understandable way about the further use of the data. It is recommended that consent to open the data for further use is obtained at the time of participation in the study.
If you wish to keep the data for possible further use by yourself or the sponsor, you are responsible for ensuring that the data are kept securely and that personal data are protected (see Chapter 4).
Discuss with your thesis supervisor whether your data are such that they should be made openly available on the internet in a data archive for others to view and use. Is the data of general interest, is it methodologically valid and can it be used in a new study? The re-use of data should also be agreed with the commissioner at the outset. Make an agreement with the commissioner on the ownership or co-use of the data (see section 2.5).
Before re-use or open access publishing of your data, the data must be anonymised, i.e. processed in such a way that no personal data remain (see section 2) and no individual persons can be identified by combining the data.
Tips:
Open access means storing the data in a public data repository where it can be accessed. If you want to make your data available for open access publishing, please discuss with your thesis supervisor where the data can be placed and where the descriptive data can be published. If you want to make your data available, contact the support services of your institution together with your thesis supervisor.
Who is responsible for data management and what kind of resources does it require? Briefly describe here how the tasks and responsibilities described in the previous answers are divided. Who is or are responsible for the tasks related to the management of data during the life cycle of the thesis? What resources (e.g. time, money) are needed to store and distribute the material?
Tips:
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