... | ... | @@ -34,4 +34,15 @@ When a new row is to be created, PEP will not have generated a PP yet, preventin |
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New PEP rows can also be created by means of the `pepAssessor` application's registration feature. It prompts the user for some initial data for the new row, then generates an "external" identifier and uses that to store the entered data. The user can then copy the identifier to a different application, e.g. a Salesforce system used for the registration of an academic study's participants.
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PEP's generated "external" identifiers are alphanumeric and rather short, to allow them to be copied and entered by hand. Additionally, to prevent them from getting lost (perhaps rendering the row inaccessible), generated identifiers are stored into PEP's `ParticipantIdentifier` column and can be listed from there. Needless to say, this information must be kept secret to prevent it from being used as a persistent identifier! External identifiers should therefore only be made available to PEP users that are already privy to a complete set of non-pseudonymous data, such as assessors processing a study's participants. |
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PEP's generated "external" identifiers are alphanumeric and rather short, to allow them to be copied and entered by hand. Additionally, to prevent them from getting lost (perhaps rendering the row inaccessible), generated identifiers are stored into PEP's `ParticipantIdentifier` column and can be listed from there. Needless to say, this information must be kept secret to prevent it from being used as a persistent identifier! External identifiers should therefore only be made available to PEP users that are already privy to a complete set of non-pseudonymous data, such as assessors processing a study's participants.
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### Short pseudonyms
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Sometimes PEP rows must be associated with data stored outside PEP. (This is e.g. the case with non-digital specimens, such as biosamples taken during medical research.) These external data are often intended to be analyzed together with data stored in PEP, requiring them to be associated with a particular PEP row. But we want to make it impossible to associate different external samples with each other, precluding data blending by means of a common (fixed) identifier.
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Although PP's could conceivably be used, they are often too long and unwieldy to be of practical use in external storage. For example, PPs do not fit onto stickers that can be affixed onto a blood vial, and PPs are too long to manually type into third-party software systems. So instead of PPs, shorter and more readable identifiers are associated with each individual external sample. Known as short pseudonyms (SPs), these identifiers are then stored in PEP.
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Since SPs uniquely identify a single external sample, they can also be used to uniquely identify a single row. Therefore, to prevent SPs from being used to blend different sets of PEP data, care should be taken not to expose SPs to (different) access groups.
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PEP has the ability to generate SPs for any participant registered with the `pepAssessor` application. These generated SPs can then be printed onto stickers that can be affixed to the external (bio)sample.
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