Heads up: some academic research taking place

[RowanMumsnet]

Hello

Some researchers from a UK university are going to be collecting posts from some boards on Mumsnet over the next few weeks. They will be looking only at posts published from this point onwards. Selected posts will be anonymised (ie usernames will not be stored anywhere), and all processes will be GDPR-compliant.

EDITED BY MNHQ: to be clear, NO private or back-end data is being shared with the researchers and they will have NO access to any extra information about users. They will only be analysing published posts, ie things that are already in the public domain.

The researchers will analyse the text of the anonymised posts as part of their study. The full text of these anonymised posts will not be reproduced in the study - no pieces of text that make you or your situation identifiable will be published.

Once the study is complete, the database containing the anonymised posts will be destroyed.

Obviously we'd love to tell you what the study is about - but we can't because it will skew the results. However once the research has been completed we'll share it with you and you can read all about it. The academics running the study are people we've worked with before, and the topic is one we think lots of MN users will agree is interesting and useful.

IMPORTANT BIT: if you DO NOT want your posts to be considered for inclusion in the research, please shout here on this thread or email us on [email protected]

And of course let us know if you have any questions and we'll see if we can answer them.

Thanks

MNHQ

I'm sure there is nothing sinister going on but I don't like the vagueness of it all, quite happy to help with valid research where I can, when done properly but this all seems very odd.

Please opt me out too- thanks.

I couldn’t give a shiny shite.

How can you opt in/out if you don’t have all the details?
I would expect more from university research

Then you don't understand the basic principle of research. Which is that if candidates are aware of what is being looked for it influences their behaviour. And that invalidates the results.

Sounds like a massive data breach of the future... over and out!

Indeed. And it’s not like mn don’t have previous...

GladAllOver

Then you don't understand the basic principle of research.

No need for "you don't understand" its a shoddy argument.

Which is that if candidates are aware of what is being looked for it influences their behaviour. And that invalidates the results.

Then by starting this thread MN have already invalidated the results. Posters now know what is happening and will/could be more guarded in their response to threads.

A standard part of research is ethics and bias, This is somewhat of a concern for anyone researching anything, by using this board I would have thought that several assumptions would have to take place

that the responses are from women.
that the responses comes from a parent.

Without backroom access neither of these things can be verified and even with backroom access there is no guarantee of this.

I couldn't care less if they use my responses, they're welcome to if they want, but I'm very boring & ordinary, I think!

Over what period of time is this study taking place, just out of curiosity? Apologies if you've already mentioned this.

There’s a big difference between “we’re conducting research, just FYI” and “we’re conducting research on the S&B board on the language used by posters about cosmetic surgery”. The latter would absolutely attract PR interns littering their posts with “confidence”, “positive” and “transformation”. The former can’t.

If you take part in any research with a psychological element it’s routine for the effect they’re looking for to be obscured, and in this case with the obvious potential for deliberate commercial skewing it’s even more essential.

At the risk of being terminally helpful - has it occurred to them that they will need to include threads from various topic areas both for the control and the variable, or will they intentionally be focussing only on topic areas. (For eg - "Aibu to breastfeed in a swimming pool")

Sounds like a massive data breach of the future

How so?! All they're doing is taking what people have written on publicly-available threads.

EvilRingahBitch
True enough. I get why they may not be able to give all the details, but then people are free to say 'I've not got enough information to give informed consent so I'll politely decline'.

Usually after doing research where participants haven't been able to give informed consent in advance, they should be contacted after and given the opportunity to have their data withdrawn from the study. It'll be interesting if/how that is done on this project.

It's why I'm not giving consent and saying I want none of my posts or data used. If I can't give informed consent then it's not happening.

Just to be clear, the uni is just reading the text. Not your name. Not your personal details. It's just a slab of unattributed text.

People are right to be cautious. Most social media grabs far more information about users, and employs it in unscrupulous ways. If you have any concerns about this particular project, don't even think about using Facebook.

Why does it seem odd @DoryNow?

Rulebreaker "Why does it seem odd @DoryNow?"

Purely because of the way its been worded & lack of information, not the way I have dealt with research before & never seen this sort of request on MN before either.

Just MHO, each to their own, I'm sure they will find enough MNers to provide the stats they are after.

When I did my dissertation we all used mumsnet for our data and didn’t need to fill in ethnic forms .....

Notmorewashing
Any research should have an ethics form submitted I believe (at least it did at all my universities).

They do not need consent. They didn't even have to tell MNHQ and MNHQ didn't have to tell us.

Which I imagine they won't bother to do in future and I can't say I blame them.

StarWarsHolidaySpecial

We know that they don't need consent, but they have asked which gives posters that chance to say no.

Why ask if you would ignore the answer (which would be unethical)

I was responding to all the posts about informed consent and ethics.

StarWarsHolidaySpecial

Yes I was one of them.

And they still are not asking for informed consent. They are giving the option of opting out.

Here's an idea for the hard of thinking.

If you are so worried about your ANONYMOUS posts being used in anyway on a PUBLIC forum - THE DONT POST ANYTHING ON THE INTERNET EVER *
*
Do people really have such little understanding of how public forums work that they don't realise that you and I could undertake this research and no one would be any the wiser.

They really didn't have to ask. Pretty good of them that they did.
I however did /do realise this would be a possibility because it's PUBLIC!!

Thanks for asking. I'm quite happy about this as I just assumed that this sort of thing went on all the time with hundreds of different organisation interested in all the topics MN covers.

The irony here is that the particular university who has informed MN what they are doing (and being ethical) will now have all the pearl clutchers opting out... whereas those who just do it, day in day out .. who can publish your words without a by-your-leave without falling foul of any privacy law - get a far bigger sample for their research.

Literally shooting themselves in the foot for trying to be up front and honest. No wonder most don't say anything. !

Here's another idea, stop being so damn rude

Literally shooting themselves in the foot for trying to be up front and honest. No wonder most don't say anything. !

Literally shooting themselves in the foot? That sounds a bit drastic. I hope A&E weren't too busy at the time. :)

I would like to opt out please

Social structures embed themselves in ethical substrates. Well known in, you know, actual universities.