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 opting out too. Thanks.

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!

Please do not include my posts in the study.

Don't wish to be included, sorry

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.

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. .

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.

Head
Desk
Bangs

Lighten up Lweji it'll probably never happen anyway

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

@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.

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.

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?

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

Posters' permission should have been asked before agreeing to allow the uni to go ahead with this

No, no no! Anything you post on Mumsnet is publicly available. How difficult is that to understand? You're not taking part in bespoke research. You're not being asked to respond to a quesitonnaire or survey.

They're simply analysing what has been posted on this forum. Which is available for anyone in the world and their wife to read, and use as they see fit.

If you don't want your words of wisdom to be used by anyone else, then don't post.

Can't believe it's still necessary to point that out

BIWI

Look, they can use my posts for whatever they like, but maybe Mumsnet should include a copyright statement when new people join.

OK, say you publish a book with lots of your own lovely comments. It's available for anyone in the world to read - and use as they see fit. Then someone comes along and copies all your stuff. Is it really to use as they see fit, or is there some form of copyright? The uni will reference of course, but internet copyright is not as clear cut as you make out - not ethically, at least.

Do you mean like this?

Or this?

Yes, the last one.

I hadn't seen it when I joined.

(I do admit I wasn't looking because I don't mind them using my posts).

I don't know why people are getting upset about this. Given that it's been announced, I highly doubt the research is sinister in any way. I've used forums (not MN, not that it makes a difference) to research language patterns across borders. My uni had zero issue with this given that it wasn't exploitative at all and everything was anonymous. Plus it was deathly dull to anybody who doesn't care about linguistics.

Please make room on that desk for my head!

How the fuck can anyone think they own something they post on the Web?

It's there for everyone, including the Daily Fail, to use as they wish. And there is sod all you can do about it.

@GladAllOver

Probably true, but it should be done openly when somewhere like a uni is doing it.

I think Mumsnet were right to announce it and let people say they didn't want their posts used if that's what they feel.

In any case, I do expect the uni will reference the posts using Mumsnet & the user's forum name.

For my feeling, there is a sort of ownership of posts you write.

@YourVagesty

I think linguistics students use forum posts a lot to analyse language.

--
Ah, just read that the user names won't be mentioned. Data protection got more complex this year of course.

For my feeling, there is a sort of ownership of posts you write.
You can own those feelings of course, but you don't own the words you write. They belong firstly to Mumsnet, and secondly to anyone who wants to copy them off the Web.

No thanks, no consent ask for first.

No consent given at all for any posts or any replies to posts of others.