07. What precautions should I take before using Zoom for a research project?

• UNIGE’s Zoom license must be used.
• The use of Zoom implies the collection of personal data, and you must therefore inform the participants appropriately via the consent form.
• We also invite you to read the document “Good practices in terms of security and confidentiality on Zoom”, available on the university’s website (https://www.unige.ch/enseignement-a-distance/files/4916/3542/4864/11._Zoom11_Securite__confidentialite_v3.1.pdf) and to apply them to your research practices.
• It is not permitted to share the Zoom link of a meeting via social networks.
• If you wish to record interviews via Zoom, a local recording should be used, not a cloud recording.
• Since Zoom does not allow for local audio recordings that are independent of the recording of the image appearing on the camera, it is advisable, if the quality of the recording is sufficient, to use a dictaphone (or any other external recorder) if only an audio recording is planned. Another possibility is to inform the participant that the recording is audio-visual, but that only the audio recordings will be kept and analysed within the research framework (.mp3 files), while the audio-visual recordings will be destroyed immediately (.mp4 files) following local file generation.
• Participants should be asked to change the name that appears on their window before the meeting begins.
• The consent form cannot be sent/collected by Zoom.

In any case, it is necessary to include this additional information in the consent form if testing is to be done virtually. We suggest using the following text:

“If health conditions require it, we will conduct the interviews/tasks/other [to be adapted according to your case] using Zoom software under license with the University of Geneva. The use of Zoom involves the collection of personal data. The Zoom platform is certified by the Swiss-US Privacy Shield agreement. The meeting link will be sent to you by e-mail (your e-mail address will be deleted as soon as we no longer need it) [to be adapted according to your procedure]. Prior to the session, please replace the name on your Zoom display window with a nickname/participant code that we have provided for you [choose the appropriate option for you], so that your identity remains hidden. You will be notified when the audio/video recording begins [if applicable; choose the applicable option for you], and you will be asked to confirm your agreement to the recording verbally. The recording will be stored locally (not on the cloud) and used for strict research purposes. [if only audio recording is needed, specify that audio-visual recordings will be destroyed immediately following the interview].”