Research Rules

[teabooksandchocolate]

I was wondering if the forum has an official policy regarding research. I just read an article that when through an online forum and did a qualitative study, and it got me thinking. The article did not make it sound as if consent was obtained from all the posters, as it was available online content. I'm not sure if the forum studied was like this one, where an account is needed to see the majority of the posts. But, I thought it might be something for us as a community to think about, if we want a statement about how researchers would need to approach consent here and then what we'd want it to be (asking the admods if they can use forum threads, asking every user in a thread that would be used, etc).

Admods, if this is something that's already been discussed among yourselves, sorry!

[CodaSammy]

What we've discussed already is that anyone wanting people to participate in a survey needs to get mod approval before posting a request for volunteers. We will not allow solicitations for donations or votes in contests, etc, but as long as it's a good fit for our community, we will allow research participation requests.

Obviously, to request study participation here, you'd have to start a thread and request participation, so you get explicit consent that way. But I'm not sure I'm really getting at what you're referring to. Is this something like where the study is actually focusing on forum posts, so people's posts on unrelated threads would be what was being used?

[teabooksandchocolate]

Sorry for not being clearer! The researchers were looking at a forum as a whole, and then using all threads/topics that were about a particular subject. It would be like someone going through all the posts here and studying all the ones related to interpersonal support, for example. It wasn't solely responses to a post about research, where the researcher said, "I'm interested in studying xyz, please respond if you want to participate." I think it would be similar to them going through the "Minor Annoyances Thread' or the 'How were you awesome' thread.

[CodaSammy]

Aha! I see. I'll take this to the team for discussion and we'll get back to you :)

[teabooksandchocolate]

Thanks!