Ethics of valeological research in higher education institutions

Background. Teaching valeological disciplines in non-medical higher education institutions is carried out by teachers with pedagogical education, medical education and medical practice (certified physicians). To successfully form valeological (health-saving) competence, the teacher needs to interview non-medical students not only regarding knowledge and practical skills in solving situational tasks using academic tests, but also to study his behavior models, for which special questionnaires with questions on sensitive topics have been developed. Aim. To develop an algorithm for reliable storage of confidential information regarding the health and behavior of non-medical students studying valeological disciplines. Materials and Methods. The research was conducted using the sociological method and the system analysis method. Results and Conclusions. The openness of answers to sensitive questions is ensured only by the confidential storage of the received questionnaire data. For confidential data storage, paper tests-questionnaires should be divided into three parts: a non-confidential test (contains the personal data of the education seeker), a confidential questionnaire (contains an encryption code instead of the personal data of the education seeker), and a code key (contains the code and personal data of students for their identification if necessary to combine the test and questionnaire data). The forced transition to distance learning accelerated the transition to electronic testing-questionnaires and the digitization of paper test-questionnaire data. For confidential questionnaire data storage, encryption of the students’ personal data and separation of access to confidential and non-confidential data using standard scripts of the Google Forms, which allows using confidential questionnaires instead of anonymous ones. For scientific purposes, the questionnaire data is statistically processed as anonymous. If necessary, use standard scripts allows decoding the key data and identifying the students. Keywords: valeological competence, trusted doctor, "Health Pedagogy", "Fundamentals of Medical Knowledge and Health-Saving", confidential surveys.