01Guiding Principles

The Healthy Basement Society research program is governed by four principles, adapted from the Belmont Report's framework for human-subjects research:

• Respect for persons. Participation is voluntary, fully informed, and revocable at any time without consequence.
• Beneficence. We minimize burden on respondents and design every protocol to produce knowledge of public interest.
• Justice. We sample inclusively across geography, income, and housing-stock age so findings serve the broad public, not a narrow segment.
• Accountability. Methodology, anonymization procedures, and aggregate findings are published; an external advisory board has authority to halt any release that violates these principles.

02IRB-Style Protocol

HBS is not a covered institution under 45 C.F.R. Part 46 ("the Common Rule") because its research is not federally funded human-subjects research. We nonetheless voluntarily adhere to a protocol modeled on the Common Rule and on the analogous Department of Health and Human Services standards for minimal-risk survey research:

• each new study category, instrument, or methodology change is reviewed by our Independent Research Advisory Board ("IRAB") before fieldwork begins;
• the IRAB evaluates the proposed consent script, anonymization plan, aggregation thresholds, and publication boundaries against this Statement;
• the IRAB has documented authority to require modifications, additional safeguards, or to disapprove the study;
• any material protocol change after approval triggers re-review;
• annual continuing review is mandatory and documented.

The IRAB is composed of at least five members including, at minimum, one privacy or research-ethics scholar, one statistician, one community member unaffiliated with HBS, one civil engineer or building scientist, and one practicing attorney with relevant subject-matter expertise. Members serve staggered three-year terms and disclose conflicts at every meeting.

03Informed Consent

At the start of every survey contact, our researchers read a standardized consent disclosure that includes, at minimum:

• the identity of the Healthy Basement Society and the research-only purpose of the call;
• a clear statement that participation is voluntary and may be ended at any time;
• a description of the categories of questions asked and the approximate duration;
• a description of how responses will be anonymized, aggregated, and published;
• a statement that no goods or services are being sold and no contact information will be shared with commercial parties;
• a clear point of contact for questions and rights requests.

Consent is verbal, contemporaneous, and logged. The current consent script is reviewed annually by the IRAB and external counsel and is available on request to [email protected].

04Anonymization Methodology

HBS uses a layered anonymization process designed to make re-identification of any individual respondent practically infeasible:

1. Identifier separation. Direct identifiers (name, exact address, phone number, email) are recorded only on the field-collection device, in a separate logical store from response content, and are linked to the response only by an opaque survey ID.
2. 24-hour purge. Within twenty-four hours of collection, the identifier store is purged. The opaque survey ID is retained on the response only as a duplicate-detection token, salted and hashed before any analytic use.
3. Geographic generalization. Address fields are reduced to ZIP code and county at the moment of ingest. Latitudes and longitudes, if collected for sampling, are dropped. Street-level coordinates are never persisted.
4. Quasi-identifier review. Free-text and combination fields (e.g., age band + household size + housing-stock vintage) are reviewed for k-anonymity (k ≥ 5) within each published geographic unit; outliers are coarsened, suppressed, or aggregated up.
5. Output suppression. Cells with fewer than ten responses, or with statistical instability indicating high uncertainty, are suppressed in published outputs and replaced with a "—" symbol and an explanatory footnote.

Our anonymization policy is reviewed by external privacy counsel and statistically audited annually. The audit report's executive summary is published in our annual transparency report.

05Aggregation Thresholds

HBS publishes findings only at or above the following aggregation thresholds:

• Geographic minimum: ZIP code (5-digit) is the smallest geographic unit ever published. Smaller units (block, parcel, address) are never published.
• Cell minimum: ten (10) responding households per published cell. Cells below this threshold are suppressed.
• Cross-tab minimum: when more than two attributes are crossed, the minimum cell size rises to fifteen (15) and outputs are reviewed manually before publication.
• Rare-attribute coarsening: attribute values appearing in fewer than 5% of responses within a geographic unit are merged into broader categories before publication.

06Publication Standards

Every published page, chart, downloadable dataset, and report PDF includes:

• a methodology link describing collection, anonymization, and aggregation;
• response-count and confidence-interval annotations where applicable;
• a standard disclaimer that aggregated research data does not represent any individual property or homeowner;
• a feedback channel for data-quality concerns or suspected re-identification risks.

Pre-publication review by the IRAB is required for: any new geographic-unit publication, any new attribute publication, any methodology change, and any release derived from a sample under 100 households.

07Researcher Data Access

HBS makes anonymized aggregate datasets available to qualified academic and journalistic researchers under a non-commercial research license. The license requires the recipient to:

• not attempt to re-identify any individual or household;
• not combine the dataset with other datasets in a manner reasonably likely to enable re-identification;
• cite HBS and the methodology document in any derivative publication;
• report any inadvertent re-identification or data-quality concern within seventy-two (72) hours;
• delete the dataset within twelve (12) months of receipt or upon completion of the cited project, whichever comes first.

Requests are evaluated by HBS staff and the IRAB based on stated research purpose, demonstrated capacity for safeguarding data, and the proportionality of the requested granularity to the research question.

08Advisory Board Charter

The Independent Research Advisory Board operates under a written charter, summarized below. The full charter is available on request.

• Authority. The IRAB has independent authority to approve, require modifications to, or disapprove any HBS study, methodology change, or planned publication. HBS leadership commits in writing not to override IRAB disapprovals.
• Composition. Five to seven voting members, with the standing seat composition described in Section 2. A non-voting HBS staff secretary supports the board.
• Conflicts. Members disclose conflicts at every meeting and recuse on affected matters.
• Compensation. Members receive a modest honorarium consistent with non-profit norms. Compensation is published in the annual transparency report.
• Cadence. The IRAB meets at least quarterly. Decisions are recorded in publicly available minutes (with sensitive details redacted as needed).

09Incident Response

If HBS becomes aware of an incident affecting research data — including suspected re-identification, unauthorized access, or accidental disclosure — we follow a documented response plan:

• contain and triage within four (4) hours of detection;
• notify the IRAB chair and external counsel within twenty-four (24) hours;
• perform a root-cause analysis and complete a written incident report within thirty (30) days;
• provide affected individuals and applicable regulators with timely notice consistent with applicable law;
• publish a summary of the incident, root cause, and remediation in the next annual transparency report, even where individual notification is not required by law.

10Transparency Reports

HBS publishes an annual transparency report that includes, at a minimum: study volume by category, response counts and demographics, IRAB approvals and disapprovals, anonymization-audit summary, incidents and remediation, opt-out volumes, and budget against expenditure. Reports are archived on the Research page and are not removed once posted.

11Contact

• Ethics email: [email protected]
• IRAB chair: [email protected]
• Mailing address: Healthy Basement Society, Attn: Research Ethics, 212 W Wayne St, Suite 305, Fort Wayne, IN 46802