If your research involves working with people, be it through surveys, interviews, trials, experiments, focus groups or other methods, then it is important to know the legal and ethical obligations you have towards research participants.
With the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) replacing the Data Protection Act in May 2018, the responsibilities that researchers have for the handling and processing of personal information change. At the same time, research data obtained from people can be published in a data repository, shared and reused in future if you pay attention to gaining consent for data sharing, de-identifying (anonymising) data where needed and controlling access.