Which were your team's most important research questions?
Editors
Evaluate access to research materials
To learn and monitor awareness of TWL program
Evaluate skills related to retrieving research materials
Evaluate editor awareness of research/Wikipedia literacy challenges for members of the public
Identify awareness/goodwill of GLAM-Wiki and Library partnerships
Identify degree of goodwill towards GLAM-Wiki or other partnerships with other organizations
To learn level of engagement in outreach work (like GLAM-Wiki or Library Partnerships)
Affiliates & Program leaders
Identify depth of understanding of GLAM-Wiki
To what extent were these questions answered?
We are still in the process of doing cross-sectional analysis of the data with questions like those focused on main WikiProject and Contribution types, so for some questions, we are not sure about how effectively they answered our questions about the community. However, the initial data looks promising in letting us evaluate and calibrate our effort in communications and development of learning materials for various program activities. We expect for a number of these to produce very actionable activities when cross-sectional analysis is possible.
What additional analyses does your team need?
Breakdown by primary Wikimedia project
Breakdown by answer to certain questions
PR02 needs account age information
‘Other’ responses on PR01, PR02, PR04, PR08, PR23
Which questions surprised your team?
11% awareness of 'Free publisher research access through The Wikipedia Library'
And the difference between this response and 23% of users having heard of The Wikipedia Library
English Wikipedia was 6% of respondents
17% of editors reported starting research by often or almost always going to the library. 42% of editors reported that they never start research by going to the library.
Almost half of users never go to the library to start research
Nearly 1 in 5 often use their library
21% of editors were aware of IABot - a project which started just a year ago (as many as the reference desk, 10% more than free research access through TWL)
71% of editors with resource access challenges had problems due to them not being available digital formats - comparable to the % that ran into paywall issues.
This particular question suggests that there is still a very wide gap between the research that community members want to do, and what’s available to them in existing research programs -- because existing programs have focused on en-mass acquisition systems.
How does your team you plan to use the data?
The programs team plans to evaluate the various amounts of awareness of and interest in learning more about specific program areas. We plan to expand communications and education materials around these areas in order to empower individuals that want to participate more extensively in the space -- for example, we see that a number of program leaders can explain edit-a-thons and are interested in doing edit-a-thons in the next twelve months, thus there is lots of opportunity for compiling more thorough training materials to support such events. We intend to monitor awareness in subsequent surveys to evaluate the effectiveness of these initiatives.
We also intend to break responses down by primary language / wikimedia project to plan and monitor our global work. Understanding the challenges editors face in each community will be important so that we can tailor our support to each community’s needs.
One of our goals for the survey was to evaluate the level of interest and engagement editor communities feel in facilitating understanding of the projects, especially when communicating with target communities such as educators or librarians, who have vested professional interest in understanding our projects. One of our larger operating theories about the Wikimedia programs, is that the programs help community members become better communicators of our projects, in turn building interest and investment from outreach communities. We see in PR17, PR18, PR20 and for program leaders: LE12, PR21 & LE22, PR23, a number of interesting gaps in awareness about the various program tactics and outreach communities among the broader editor community and program leaders. One space for us to explore, in the coming years is building the broad awareness of how these target groups could benefit from the community among existing editors, in turn increasing interest and engagement in the programs themselves. Campaigns like #1lib1ref and #OAWiki gives us platforms for communication to both internal and external communities, and the Education team is also working to develop better understanding of how Education program activities better correlate with what Educators find persuasive: learning outcomes.
What survey questions would your team like to ask next time?
Next time that we run the survey, we would like to include more questions about other program types. Currently the program questions were heavily focus on GLAM-Wiki and the Wikipedia Library, because of the staffing available at the time of developing the survey (in late 2016, the Education team was in the middle of refiling several positions on the team). Additionally, as of the survey development, the Programs team had not developed a holistic cross-program strategy: previously the programs had been organizationally independent of each other; and, we also are identifying additional program areas, such as Gender programming and support of STEM field interests separate from Education and partnering institutions. Each of these gaps should be addressed by rewriting some of our existing question or adding ones targeted for impact in each of these areas.
Things we want to change the next time we run the survey:
PR07:
Option 8 “The visual editors Citoid” may have been unclear, because the auto-fill reference tool is not clearly labeled as “Citoid” in the user interface.
PR08/PR09:
Add a ‘does not apply’ option for users not actively engaged in research.*
These questions are worded very similarly and respondents may have interpreted them in the same way if presented with both (distinction between searching and accessing).
4 – Other special collections or research libraries (15%)
5 – Other institutional resource (specify): (4%)
6 – Personal subscriptions to academic databases (13%)
7 – Personal subscriptions to newspapers or genealogical databases. (17%)
8 – Personal research collection or privately held library (50%)
9 – Other personal resource (specify): (5%)
56% of survey participants have access to a public or government library, 50% have access to their personal libraries and 35% have access to a university library.
79% of sampled editors who participated in the survey reported searching or using often or almost always for non-Wikimedia resources (books, websites, research papers) when creating content on Wikimedia projects.
79% of sampled editors who participated in the survey reported using using a search engine (e.g. Yahoo, Google) to start research for contributing to Wikipedia articles.
16% of sampled editors who participated in the survey reported searching on Google Scholar to start research for contributing to Wikipedia articles. 58% of sampled editors who participated in the survey reported that they never use Google scholar
27% of sampled editors who participated in the survey reported searching often or almost always in a library catalogue or search tool to find research for contributing to Wikipedia articles. 35% of sampled editors who participated in the survey reported that they never search a library catalogue or search tool.
12% of sampled editors who participated in the survey reported starting research by often or almost always looking at recommendations on-wiki. 35% of sampled editors who participated in the survey reported that they never start research by looking at recommendations on-wiki.
17% of sampled editors who participated in the survey reported starting research by often or almost always looking at source recommendations created by other Wikis. 38% of sampled editors who participated in the survey reported that they never start research by looking at source recommendations created by other Wikis.
36% of sampled editors who participated in the survey reported starting research by often or almost always searching in a database that I have access to. 31% of sampled editors who participated in the survey reported that they never start research by searching in a database that I have access to.
17% of sampled editors who participated in the survey reported starting research by often or almost always going to the library. 42% of sampled editors who participated in the survey reported that they never start research by going to the library.
37% of sampled editors who participated in the survey reported starting research by often or almost always using Open Access repositories or databases. 24% of sampled editors who participated in the survey reported that they never start research by using Open Access repositories or databases.
46% of sampled editors who participated in the survey reported starting research by often or almost always in another way from previous options. 37% of sampled editors who participated in the survey reported that they never start research in another way from previous options.
3 – Free publisher research access through The Wikipedia Library (11%)
4 – Wikipedia Visiting Scholars (6%)
5 – Open Access Signalling Project and/or OABot (1%)
6 – Book or research grants offered by my local affiliate or chapter (10%)
7 – Internet Archive’s Wikipedia bot to fix dead-links in Wikipedia citations (21%)
8 – The visual editor’s Citoid (3%)
9 – Forward to Libraries (6%)
10 – Special:BookSources (7%)
11 – Wikipedia:Research help (WP:RH) on English Wikipedia only (3%)
12 – The Books & Bytes Wikipedia Library Newsletter (3%)
21% of respondents are familiar with the Wikipedia Library Reference desk and 21% are familiar with Internet Archive’s Wikipedia bot to fix dead-links in Wikipedia citations. It's important to note that 51% of all the respondents who saw the question did not select any option.
33% of sampled editors who participated in the survey reported often or almost always running into challenges searching for research materials needed for contributing to Wikimedia projects.
26% of sampled editors who participated in the survey reported often or almost always running into challenges accessing research materials needed for contributing to Wikimedia projects.
To what extent do you feel prepared to explain anything related to Wikipedia or Wikimedia (e.g. culture, programs) to a non-Wikimedian who only reads Wikipedia?
44% of sampled editors who participated in this question reported feeling mostly or completely prepared to explain anything related to Wikipedia or Wikimedia (e.g. culture, programs) to a non-Wikimedian who only reads Wikipedia.
1 – I have never heard of GLAM-Wiki projects (71%)
2 – I have only heard of GLAM-Wiki projects, but never participated in one (23%)
3 – I have participated in GLAM-Wiki projects, but never organized one (4%)
4 – I have organized GLAM-Wiki projects in the past, but no longer organize them (1%)
5 – I am currently an organizer of GLAM-Wiki projects (1%)
71% of sampled editors who participated in the survey reported never having heard of GLAM-wiki projects and 6% of participants reported participating in a GLAM-wiki project or having organized one currently or in the past.
To what extent do you agree or disagree with each of the following:
When any Wikimedia organization partners with external organizations like universities, museums or technology companies…- ...it helps us further our educational mission.
87% of sampled editors who participated in this question reported that they agree or strongly agree with the following statement: "When any Wikimedia organization partners with external organizations like universities, museums or technology companies it helps us further our educational mission." 17% of those who answered the question selected "no opinion".
To what extent do you agree or disagree with each of the following:
When any Wikimedia organization partners with external organizations like universities, museums or technology companies…it helps us further our free content mission.
82% of sampled editors who participated in this question reported that they agree or strongly agree with the following statement: "When any Wikimedia organization partners with external organizations like universities, museums or technology companies it helps us further our free content mission." 15% of those who answered the question selected "no opinion"
To what extent do you agree or disagree with each of the following:
When any Wikimedia organization partners with external organizations like universities, museums or technology companies…- ...it strengthens offline communities.
79% of sampled editors who participated in this question reported that they agree or strongly agree with the following statement: "When any Wikimedia organization partners with external organizations like universities, museums or technology companies it strengthens offline communities." 26% of those who answered the question selected "no opinion"
To what extent do you agree or disagree with each of the following:
When any Wikimedia organization partners with external organizations like universities, museums or technology companies… - ...it creates conflicts of interest in our community.
17% of sampled editors who participated in this question reported that they agree or strongly agree with the following statement: "When any Wikimedia organization partners with external organizations like universities, museums or technology companies it creates conflicts of interest in our community." 26% of those who answered the question selected "no opinion".
64% of sampled editors who participated in this question reported that they agree or strongly agree with the following statement: "GLAM-wiki helps diversify our content and community." 63% of those who answered the question selected "no opinion"
67% of sampled editors who participated in this question reported that they agree or strongly agree with the following statement: "GLAM-wiki helps diversify our content and community." 62% of those who answered the question selected "no opinion"
52% of sampled editors who participated in this question reported that they agree or strongly agree with the following statement: "GLAM-wiki brings needed experts to help us fill knowledge gaps." 63% of those who answered the question selected "no opinion"
14% of sampled editors who participated in this question reported that they agree or strongly agree with the following statement: "GLAM-wiki creates special interest groups that damage the community." 64% of those who answered the question selected "no opinion"
If a other mission aligned organization (e.g. Library, University, etc.) approached you today about getting involved with Wikimedia, which of the following would you feel confident explaining: (select all that apply)