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Article History

Received: 30 September 2024

Accepted: 21 August 2026

First Online: 11 September 2026

Declarations

Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests.

Ethics approval and consent to participate: This study is a secondary analysis of publicly available, fully anonymized survey data and does not involve direct contact with human participants. The data used in this study are from “2018 Internet User Social Attitude Survey”, conducted by Professor Ma Deyong’s research team and officially archived on the Chinese National Social Survey Data Archive (CNSSDA) at the National Survey Research Center, Renmin University of China. (1) Institutional and regulatory basis for exemption from ethics review. The present study was reviewed and determined to be exempt from full ethics review by the Research Ethics Committee of the Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University. This determination is consistent with widely recognized regulatory frameworks, including the U.S. Common Rule (45 CFR 46.104(d)(4)), which exempts secondary research involving the collection or study of existing data, documents, and records if these sources are publicly available or if the information is recorded in such a manner that subjects cannot be identified, directly or through identifiers linked to the subjects. In the Chinese regulatory context, the Measures for Ethical Review of Life Sciences and Medical Research Involving Human Beings (2023) primarily governs biomedical research; social-science survey research using fully anonymized, publicly archived data for secondary analysis falls outside the scope of mandatory review under these measures and is routinely handled via institutional exemption procedures. (2) Nature of the data, anonymization, and human participants. The dataset comprises responses to a structured questionnaire on internet users’ political and social attitudes, collected via an online survey platform. All directly identifying information — including names, national ID numbers, phone numbers, email addresses, IP addresses, and precise geographic locations — was removed from the public release version of the dataset prior to our access. All analyses in this study are conducted at the aggregate level, and no individual respondent can be identified from the variables used. Because the data are fully de-identified and publicly accessible through a regulated academic data archive, they do not constitute “human participants’ data” requiring prospective ethics review or renewed consent under applicable guidelines. (3) Original ethics approval, informed consent, and permission for secondary use and publication. The original 2018 survey was conducted in accordance with the ethical standards of Professor Deyong Ma’s institution at the School of International Relations, Renmin University of China. At the beginning of the questionnaire, all participants were presented with an informed-consent statement explaining that the survey was for academic research purposes, that participation was voluntary, and that their responses would be kept confidential and used only in aggregated form. Participants indicated their consent by proceeding to complete the questionnaire. The anonymized dataset was subsequently deposited by the original research team with CNSSDA for the purpose of enabling secondary academic research. CNSSDA’s terms of use explicitly permit registered researchers to access, analyze, and publish findings based on archived data for non-commercial academic purposes. Our use of the data complies fully with these terms and with the scope of the original informed consent (academic research use of anonymized data). (4) Participant consent. Informed consent was obtained from all participants in the original 2018 survey at the time of data collection. The consent statement informed participants that the survey was for academic research purposes, that participation was voluntary, and that their responses would be kept confidential and reported only in aggregated form. Because the present study uses only the publicly released, fully de-identified version of the data, involves no interaction with or re-identification of individual respondents, and falls within the scope of academic research use to which participants originally consented, additional participant consent for this secondary analysis is not required under applicable ethical guidelines and institutional policies.

Consent for publication: All authors give consent to publish.