Are you allowed to just survey people about whatever without it being a big deal? (I’d have assumed/hoped so, but I wouldn’t be that surprised if there are weird legal risks)
Are if you do a poll or a survey… and then call it a “study”, then can you get in trouble? (I’d also have assumed this would be fine, but, seems useful to know if it’s not fine)
The “learn programming” one also would need to be a lot more involved, although I’m sure you could still find some other non-study phrase.
If you want to publish it formally, the journal may impose its own requirements. E.g. back when Facebook did a formal study on their users, they appealed to the users having consented to A/B testing when they accepted Facebook’s TOS. Afterwards, several researchers argued that this broke the rules for informed consent, with one paragraph in the linked article suggesting that the paper might end up retracted by the publisher:
When asked whether the study had had an ethical review before being approved for publication, the US National Academy of Sciences, which published the controversial paper in its Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), told the Guardian that it was investigating the issue.
(I don’t recall hearing what the results of that investigation were, but I don’t think it was ever retracted.)
Relevant questions include:
Are you allowed to just survey people about whatever without it being a big deal? (I’d have assumed/hoped so, but I wouldn’t be that surprised if there are weird legal risks)
Are if you do a poll or a survey… and then call it a “study”, then can you get in trouble? (I’d also have assumed this would be fine, but, seems useful to know if it’s not fine)
The “learn programming” one also would need to be a lot more involved, although I’m sure you could still find some other non-study phrase.
If you want to publish it formally, the journal may impose its own requirements. E.g. back when Facebook did a formal study on their users, they appealed to the users having consented to A/B testing when they accepted Facebook’s TOS. Afterwards, several researchers argued that this broke the rules for informed consent, with one paragraph in the linked article suggesting that the paper might end up retracted by the publisher:
(I don’t recall hearing what the results of that investigation were, but I don’t think it was ever retracted.)
As Jessicata said, the regulations only apply via federal funding. It’s that simple.
There are some magic words that turn an oral history into a study, but a poll is already a study. And none of this changes your funding.