Heads up: some academic research taking place

Marcopront,

You post on e.g. Mumsnet and think that's as far as your post is going. You don't think it'll be part of a research study do you.

The internet is still vague for property rights of posts AFAIK.

Also, I don't think they are simply 'reading' the posts, but analysing them in some way. We still don't know in what way mysterious

Why do they need permission to read something that is posted in the public domain?
Do you ask permission of every poster whose post you comment on?

Posters' permission should have been asked before agreeing to allow the uni to go ahead with this, but I did research and was grateful to those who helped, so it's ok by me if they include my (very few) posts.

@slippyshoeshuffle

BIWI permission was not initially sought from the sample group, and that is why a badly designed study would not get ethical approval from any reputable academic sponsor and it is therefore poor science. Qualitative or quantitative or a blend of both come under that category

FFS. No-one has to get permission from 'the sample'! This is publicly available data, because anyone who posts on Mumsnet posts for anyone in the world to read what they've written.

You can't say if it's a badly designed study because you have no idea what the university or universities is doing - how many posts are they picking? What threads are they picking from? Is it just MN or are they comparing with posts on, say, Netmums?

There is no need for any kind of ethical approval, as this is data that's available for anyone to read.

If posters on MN don't know that by now, after eleventy-billion posts just on this thread, then they are totally dim.

Clearly, I'm not the paranoid one who needs to lighten up.

Lighten up Lweji it'll probably never happen anyway

Head
Desk
Bangs

BIWI permission was not initially sought from the sample group, and that is why a badly designed study would not get ethical approval from any reputable academic sponsor and it is therefore poor science. Qualitative or quantitative or a blend of both come under that category.

If we are to believe what we have been told I would really like to know which university is sponsoring this 'study'...or perhaps the parentheses should have been around the word university.

Which is what happened with previous studies, and will always happen in the future.
The only difference this time is that the university bothered to mention it to MNHQ. You can be very sure that no one will ever inform them again, as it causes too much work to filter out the drop-outs. .

If I were the researchers I wouldn’t waste time by sifting through people who opted out. I would just conduct the research as if the option hadn’t been asked at all. There’s no reason to actually go through with it and it would probably skew results.

Don't wish to be included, sorry

Please do not include my posts in the study.

I agree, @Lweji.

Why is this 'bad science'? You have no idea what kind of research they're doing. It could be qualitative, which applies 'rigour' in a completely different way!

I'm opting out too. Thanks.

Just disputing the statement that it's "bad science".

Not more than usual, but if you can observe behaviour it's better than asking.

you'd get all sorts of biases, as well as blatant lying.

What, more than usual?

GladAllOver

I may indeed have a vivid imagination but I am not the one making up scenarios.

Boney, you have a vivid imagination. I haven't said they believe either that or the contrary, since the majority have not stated their understanding. Some certainly have though, and good for them.

GladAllOver

So your belief is that posters that have opted out of this piece of research being done on MN believe that they have opted out of all pieces of research done on MN even the research that isn't known about?

That is good to know.

Nobody likes spam, though. Even if supposedly for research.

Well Boney, I'm glad they have all confided that message to you, because they haven't all stated so in their opt-out requests.

@cobwebsinthebelfr

That is a matter for supervisory committees/examinaminers or peer reviewers, not ethics committees, though.

But, again, you do not know anything about what is being researched or the methods used, so you really can't evaluate them.

For example, behaviour on message boards can only be assessed by, well, looking at posts on message boards.
Conversely, if you got people to reply to a survey about their own behaviour on messageboards, you'd get all sorts of biases, as well as blatant lying.

GladAllOver

I can't make my mind up whether posts like that are goady or just tin foil hat.
As has been posted many many MANY times those that have opted out understand this.
Posters repeating it seem to have nothing better to do.