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

No one needs your consent.

It would be interesting if there was some research which compared random posts by people who didn't consent and random posts by people who didn't care. Random posts across the site that is. Because no one needs consent to do that.

That would be amusing

I've already done it.

Wonder what the research will be used for?

If it's analysing how subject matter influences vocabulary selection or some other aspect of fitting language to situation, it'll not really be much use in itself (which applies to a lot of research in linguistics!)

Look ing at trends in how people use language is nter sting in itself, and might inform those who wish to refine certain communications. So it could get picked up be someone who works in advertising or PR, but - as pointed out repeatedly - that sort of analysis of what people post publically goes on all the time.

I have a theory that this is actually the aim of the research project...getting MN to post this and then analyse the responses. There is no other 'research project'. This is it.

onlyoakfurniture are you referring to the awfully embarrassing grammatical errors?

Oh bore off spammer!

Oh, and creating a profile for yourself doesn't make you any less of one.

onlyoakfurnitureare you referring to the awfully embarrassing grammatical errors?

Or the fact that they call themselves onlyoak but they sell other wood as well?
They are off my buying list for sure.

Opting out, don't include my posts, thanks.

This thread is extraordinary. What makes anyone think that this site isn't analysed all the time by all sorts of companies for a million different reasons, many of which you may not agree with.

MN can't possibly control all of this activity and given that this is a public forum, why should they?

If you don't want your public comments on a public forum being read by all and sundry, why are you here?

Maybe the research is how many times the same points keep getting repeated in posts.

Or how many times the same posts are ignored.

Or how many times the same posts are both repeated and ignored

@RowanMumsnet if the intention is to make us all aware of this you're not doing a great job. I am a very frequent & regular user of MN & have only just spotted this post - almost a month after it was posted. If the data may be mined from any Board on MN, you need to pin this post onto every Board too. Or at least the most popular ones.

Really? It's been in active convos many, many times! You're clearly not putting in enough MN hours

Everyone's moaning but they are posting on a public board in the first place

Yes really BIWI. And believe me I spend far too much time on here as it is ...

I'd also suggest the headline isn't explicit enough. Most people will think it's an invitation to do a survey & not bother to click on the thread & find out what it's about.

grumiosmum, I agree with BIWI. This thread was 'stickied' by MNHQ when they started it on 30th Aug - very obvious. The title was enough for me to click on the thread back then, even though I haven't commented previously.

This is normal way to conduct research. It's publicly available open source data.

What do people think is going to happen? They are not interested in what any one particular poster says. They're analysing patterns of language use in a particular topic. Nobody is even going to be reading your whole sentences. The database will have no information on it that isn't already on MN!

Previously psychological research has been carried out on sites like MN to investigate attitudes to breastfeeding. There is no invasion of privacy. MN do not have to seek permission for this. They're just being polite.

Fair enough SLoisachtal but your experience was different to mine.

I rarely look at site stuff - only visiting it now because the paragraph thingy went wrong - but look at Active convos nearly every day, sometimes several times a day, and this was the first time I'd noticed this.

grumiosmum, but it's also been 'stickied' in Chat for the same length of time, as far as I'm aware.