Movement Learning and Leadership Development Project/Research process
Methodology[edit]
We wanted to understand how to replicate the positive experiences volunteers have had as well as address the challenges and barriers they have experienced throughout their engagement with the Wikimedia Movement. The varied volunteer experiences we were looking to understand are complex and not well-suited to surveys or other more quantitative tools. Therefore, we used a qualitative inquiry approach to this project.
Qualitative inquiry approach can take on many forms, and for this study we utilized a "Grounded Theory" approach. Grounded Theory (GT) is about understanding complex social phenomena by a process of comparison. MAXQDA, a software package, helped us to apply the grounded theory approach. In order to ensure further cross-checking of the interviews and address any researcher bias, we also used a text analysis software program, Leximancer, to limit any possible predispositions to prior knowledge gained by the researchers in the data collection phases. That helps keep researchers from focusing on what they already know or think they know. Interviews were confidential, and all information collected has been anonymized.
Analogous and Staff Participants[edit]
In order to develop an informed inquiry approach, the research team first interviewed Wikimedia Foundation staff members with extensive experience interfacing with our communities. The purpose of this was not to base the understanding of volunteer experience on what staff have observed. Instead, this allowed the research team to develop more focused questions to ask volunteers for the community research phase. Additionally, the team interviewed members from analogous organizations with global volunteer networks in an effort to understand how outside organizations think about and approach volunteer engagement and leadership development.
Community Participant Selection[edit]
The research was publicized through Meta, global village pumps, and snowball sampling. The survey was made available in the following 10 languages; English, Français, Português do Brasil, українська, ไทย, বাংলা, Español, العربية, 日本語, and 中文.
Interested participants were asked to complete a short survey that would help the team select a purposive sample to help us understand the varied experiences of our diverse movement. A "purposive" sample is not random, but selects people from within categories. In this study, in an effort to create a sample of diverse representation of our communities, participants included but were not limited to:
- New volunteers - registered users active for under 1 year
- Intermediate volunteers - active users 2+ years
- Experienced volunteers - active users 5+ years
- Volunteers acting in on-wiki technical roles (admins, stewards, bureaucrats, etc)
- Members of Affiliates or wiki clubs (chapters, user groups, wiki clubs)
- Active participants in thematic projects (WLM, Women in Red, Black Lunch table, etc)
- Wiki projects (Wikidata, Commons, Wikisource, etc.)
- Language project representation
- Unaffiliated active users
- Members of volunteer committees - FDC, Arbcom, Affcom, etc.
- Gender, age, region, language, etc.
- Open source or global activism volunteers
- People outside of or who have left the movement
Community Participants[edit]
Community participants represented affiliated and unaffiliated groups, various projects and platforms, and engagement in Wikimedia in a multitude of ways as shown by the graphs below. Volunteers represented 26 different countries, collectively spoke 45 different languages, and have participated anywhere from a few months to over ten years. Following through on our intentions to conduct inclusive research, we were able to conduct two interviews in French, and two interviews in Spanish to accommodate volunteer language preferences.
| Countries |
|---|
| Burundi |
| Cameroon |
| Canada |
| Chile |
| China |
| Côte d'Ivoire |
| Ecuador |
| France |
| Germany |
| India |
| Iran |
| Israel |
| Mali |
| Mexico |
| Nigeria |
| Philippines |
| Portugal |
| Rwanda |
| Slovenija |
| Spain |
| Tunisia |
| Turkey |
| Uganda |
| United Kingdom |
| United States |
| Venezuela |
Gender[edit]
In an effort to improve the balance of gender representation in our study, we oversampled women to allow for a more comprehensive understanding of women’s experiences growing within the movement. While our participation form included 73% of self-identified men, 21% of self identified women, and 1% self-identified gender neutral (5% did not disclose), our interview sample includes 63% men, 33% women, and 4% gender neutral. This sampling strategy aimed to create a more balanced gender representation. However due to the limitations of participants, there still remains an imbalance.