The UP Resilience Institute – Research and Creative Work Division (UP RI-RCW) is keeping in touch with the Tufts University’s Center for Climate and health on glObal Research on Disasters (CORD) Team to discuss pertinent developments that concern the research core from the UP RI side and across the consortium. Topics of interest include data management, data privacy, and survey questionnaire standardization, among others.
On May 21, 2024, the UP RI CORD Research Core Team composed of Junior Project Assistants Alexa Hernandez and Ramon Caballero, and Chief Science Research Specialist Dennis de la Torre presented a briefer on the status of data management in the respective countries of the CORD consortium members. The briefer included the specific outputs expected from each university, and whether their government has a particular policy on data protection to ensure the ethical conduct of research activities. In the Philippines, Republic Act No. 10173, commonly known as the “Data Privacy Act of 2012,” provides the legal basis for the protection of the personal data of every individual otherwise publicized with their consent.
Aside from UP RI, only three out of six universities in the consortium have a data protection policy in their countries. With this, Mr. de la Torre suggested that the consortium should consolidate protocols to standardize how data protection and management will be done, and if there is a need for a CORD template consent form and data privacy guidelines.
Meanwhile, on June 21, 2024, and July 12, 2024, the UP RI CORD Research Core Team, along with the RCW Supervising Researcher Chris Sanchez and Junior Project Assistant/KOBOToolbox Specialist Mape Estellena, participated in discussions about data collection tools. The meeting was organized by Komal Rathod, the CORD Data Management Officer from Tufts University. Komal focused on their suggestions on how to improve the survey questionnaire before deploying them on the field. They highlighted questions that could be standardized across the consortium, especially if they have similar thematic areas such as water, sanitation, and health (WASH), disease prevention and control, and climate change and health response, among others.
The UP RI Team is looking forward to meeting again with Komal to finalize the adjustments needed for their data collection instrument. Estellena will soon lead the designing of an e-survey questionnaire in the KOBOToolbox application in our pursuit of a sustainable and digitalized practice of data collection and data management.