Research:Batea
Key Personnel[edit]
- Fred Trotter, DocGraph
- James Heilman, Wikimedia
Project Summary[edit]
Please see en:Wikipedia:Batea.
Wikipedia readers, especially health science students, are invited to install a Chrome plug-in which will track how they use Wikipedia. The plug-in further tracks how people use popular online sources of academic medical information. The plug-in tries to avoid collecting information unrelated to Wikipedia or medicine.
Whatever data is collected is reported back to researchers, who will analyze it. The goal report insights on how health science students use Wikipedia, including the following points:
- What Wikipedia articles do they read?
- How often do students follow citations to the original sources?
- Among participating students, how often do they edit Wikipedia?
Methods[edit]
- Anyone may participate by completing a consent process and installing a browser plugin
- Most research participant recruitment will happen in universities in health science classrooms
- Outreach will be done in Wikipedia projects in partnership with Wiki Project Med Foundation
Dissemination[edit]
- Wiki Project Med Foundation will offer guidance on research dissemination.
- The project will publish open access papers.
- In a way that is mindful of user identity, as much of the research data will be available publicly as open data in accord with contemporary research practices so that other researchers may build from it.
Wikimedia Policies, Ethics, and Human Subjects Protection[edit]
- The Batea study has been reviewed by an IRB. The IRB approval has a non-free copyright - ask for a copy.
Benefits for the Wikimedia community[edit]
Wikipedia's medical content is highly consulted and influences practically all public thought on health and medicine. This project will give insight into how health science students at the university and medical school level use Wikipedia along with other health information resources.
Timeline[edit]
The timeline is in development.
Study recruitment has been ongoing since early 2016. The study could be ongoing for years, if participants continue to provide study data.
The first interim report would come after there is enough data to draw some meaningful conclusion—perhaps after having 50-100 participants contribute data regularly for some months. The research is not currently at that point. Wikipedians at Wikimania 2016 will be invited to participate, and if they do, that could be a start to recruitment.
Funding[edit]
This research is funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
References[edit]
External links[edit]
- Join Batea as a research participant
- Batea main page
- DocGraph, the company managing the project
Contacts[edit]
Fred Trotter, fred@docgraph.org