Ethics & Privacy

The Learning Variability Network Exchange (LEVANTE) is designed to enable coordinated data collection around measuring children’s variability within and across individuals, groups, and cultures. The goal of the LEVANTE Data Repository (LDR) is to serve as a centralized repository for the standardized datasets generated via this framework, and to allow for the open sharing and reuse of these data. The greater the accessibility of the dataset, the higher its value to the community. Our policies are designed to foster this goal while mitigating potential risks involved in creating an open developmental dataset.

LEVANTE and the Jacobs Foundation seek to encourage the use of these resources to achieve rapid scientific progress. Moreover, the Jacobs Foundation has made data sharing a requirement for all LEVANTE data collection it funds. In order to take full advantage of such resources and maximize their research value, it is important that high quality data are made broadly available, on appropriate terms and conditions, to the largest possible number of qualified investigators in a timely manner.

Individual sites will be responsible for their own ethical approval from their research institutions and/or governmental bodies and will contribute only fully de-identified data to the LEVANTE Data Repository, which will be released to the community on an annual schedule.

If you are applying for ethical approval, shared materials will available in our Ethics Review Materials repository.

Data Submission

• To protect and assure the confidentiality and privacy of all participants, all requests to submit data to the LDR require acceptance of the Terms and Conditions contained in the LEVANTE Data Submission Agreement (DSA). The DSA outlines the terms and conditions for submitting data to the LEVANTE Data Repository. Core measure data will become available as part of scheduled LDR releases.
• All shared data are certified by the submitters to be compliant with institutional requirements (including ethical approval) and de-identified.
• All publications funded by LEVANTE contain relevant linkages to the LDR and analytic code to reproduce findings.
• All data from supplemental measures outside of the core LEVANTE measure set should be shared as detailed in the partner’s original proposal and should be deposited in the appropriate repository by no later than one year after termination of the award.

LEVANTE Data Submission Agreement

Data Use

• To protect and assure the confidentiality and privacy of all participants, all requests to access and use data in the LDR require acceptance of the Terms and Conditions contained in the LEVANTE Data Use Certification (DUC). The DUC outlines the terms and conditions for requesting access to data maintained in the LEVANTE Data Repository.
• All data must be used only for research and education purposes.
• Data users must certify that all relevant ethical and human subject (if applicable) approvals have been obtained.
• Data users must not seek to re-identify participants.
• Data users must reference LEVANTE release IDs in their publications and are encouraged to post code for reproducibility purposes.

LEVANTE Data Use Certification

Compliance

Stanford has certified that use of the LEVANTE framework is compliant in all respects with Stanford’s policies on data storage, security, and human subjects research. Please see the certification memo for more detail.

LEVANTE Research Data Compliance Memo