As school psychologists, it is our ethical responsibility to ensure the safe-keeping of records, and one way to do this with electronic records is to keep a backup of electronic records by storing them on Dropbox.  While you can do the same thing on a flash drive, flash drives are easier to lose.  Therefore, Dropbox should be seen as a legitimate way to backup documents.  

–

The following video tutorial demonstrates how to store documents on Dropbox.  Keep in mind that Dropbox is relatively private in that a username and password is required to access your account.  However, for extra safekeeping, I’d recommend password protecting these documents through the use of encryption, which was explained in earlier blog posts.  

–

It is our ethical responsibility to back up documents because computers have the tendency to crash or break, resulting in the loss of records. As mentioned in the NASP Ethical Principals (2010), standard II.4.7 states, To the extent that school psychological records are under their control, school psychologists protect electronic files from unauthorized release or modification (e.g., by using passwords and encryption), and they take reasonable steps to ensure that school psychological records are not lost due to equipment failure.”