Ethics case studies

I thought this was an interesting project: The Observatory for Responsible Research and Innovation in ICT (TORRII) "A repository of information and methods about responsible research and innovation (RRI) in information and communication technologies." The website includes some descriptions of how particular issues have been dealt with in research projects. I just skimmed a few, but I noticed this exercise in:
Read, J.C. "The ABCD approach to working ethically with children in ICT research and development". http://torrii.responsible-innovation.org.uk/case-studies/abcd-approach-working-ethically-children-ict-research-and-development
They identified key decisions and asked why, then gave the "excuse" and the "to be honest (tbh)" answers. e.g."What platform are we using? Answer; Android tablets
"Why this platform? Answer (Excuse for use) it will engage children (this would be their first exposure to this technology) and the technology has low power needs; Answer (tbh version) we want to showcase the work of our technology group"
There are also material relevant e.g. to those studying social network data.
http://torrii.responsible-innovation.org.uk/case-studies

Post viva questionnaire - responses from Robinah K. Namuleme

Robinah  (who led a discussion about her project in 2011) passed her viva in December 2012.  She kindly agreed to complete the post-viva questionnaire that was drawn up after last month's discussion group.  Her responses are below.

What is the title of your thesis?

Information and HIV/AIDS: an ethnographic study of information behaviour.

Can you provide an abstract (for inclusion in this blog)?

See Abstract.

How long did you spend preparing for your viva?
3 years and 4 months.

How long did your viva take?

1 hour 25 minutes.

Is there anything you wish you had done differently?

Part of me thinks nothing - it is a learning experience, but practically I might have...

• tried to obtain full funding for the PhD (to enable me commit ample time to research);
• included a quantitative element in my study;
• allowed ample time after writing up.  I would like to have got away from my work for at least a week and thoroughly re-read the thesis to be able to identify formatting problems, such as extra spaces, before submission;
• published more papers. 

Did the examiners concentrate on any particular section of your thesis? If so, which?

Although my examiners moved systematically right from the abstract to Chapter 9, they concentrated on the methodology, including justification for the choice of the approach employed.  They sought to know how I gained access to the research setting, how I addressed ethical issues, and built a rapport with the participants.

Can you describe any part of your viva where you were pleased with your performance?

The literature review and findings chapters.

What was it you did that pleased you?

I was mostly pleased when the examiners said that my literature review and analysis were competently presented that they had no questions to ask.  I was also pleased by the fact that the examiners confirmed my claim about the contribution to knowledge.  They advised me to publish papers in order to disseminate the findings.

Can you describe any part of your viva where you were dissatisfied with your performance?

The model.

What was it you did that dissatisfied you?

Although my model was a good attempt to present all the findings, it was perceived to be complex.

Please give an example of a question that you found hard.

Why didn’t you use Grounded Theory (GT)?

Why was it hard?

It was hard because both my examiners are so much in the tradition of employing GTto Library and Information Science research.  However, I had strong reasons for choosing the ethnographic approach to the study of information behaviour of persons infected with or affected by HIV/AIDS.  This enabled me to defend my decision to employ ethnography and not GT.

What was the outcome of your viva?

The examiners recommended the award of a PhD subject to minor amendments.

Please give some examples of the sort of corrections you need to make (if any).

Some examples of the corrections I needed to make:

• Spacing issues page 49,51,97,113,118,121
• On occasions you omit spaces e.g 3,5,33,50, 97,
• The model is complex.  It needs to be made simpler then it will have more impact and make it easier for the reader to follow the explanation.
• Page.  38 cognitive needs a capital “C”
• Different font sizes on page 48.

Do you have any tips for looking and feeling confident in front of the examiners?

Tips:

• Be passionate about your work
• Know your thesis so well in order to defend it. 
•  Practice answering viva questions
• Request for a mock viva to be arranged
• Talk to other people about your work.  Their feedback can greatly enhance your confidence

Can you think of any good advice that you would give to students who are preparing for their viva?

ALLOW ENOUGH TIME TO THOROUGHLY REVISE THE THESIS. 

STOP REVISING AND GET AWAY FROM YOUR THESIS AT LEAST THREE DAYS TO THE VIVA.

IT WILL SURELY COME BACK TO YOU DURING THE VIVA

More about journal clubs

This is to alert people to the fact that there is an online journal club meeting on 13th March at 8pm UK time. You can find more information here: http://infolitjournalclub.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/online-journal-club-13-march-ancil.html I will be talking more about this on the researchers' meeting in the iSchool on 14th March.

Also if people want something to read about reading clubs, what they are and why people use them, a useful paper is:
Deenadayalan, Y, K Grimmer-Somers, M Prior, and S Kumar. (2008) “How to run an effective journal club: a systematic review.” Journal of evaluation in clinical practice, 14 (5), 898-911.

Vivas and other scary things

At the last researchers' discussion, a request was made for reports from the frontline - i.e. - could people who have just had a viva tell others for whom it is still a future hurdle, what sort of questions they were asked and what sort difficulties they encountered.

James Wallace (who contributed to this blog recently) had just successfully passed his upgrade viva (congratulations!) and made the following points:

"People need to be made aware that the whole point of the exercise is that the examiner is wanting to find ways of proving how good you are, rather than trying to cause problems. It's not a case of trick questions - if something is asked that seems straightforward, it probably is, although no-one will object if you take a little time to think things through. 

"In my case, the questions were based on discussion points from my own text, so making sure you familiarise yourself with your work before the day is a good idea."

Following the session however, we decided to try putting the following questions to students who have just completed their viva.  Hopefully they'll yield some interesting answers.

1. What is the title of your thesis?
2. Can you provide an abstract (for inclusion in this blog)?
3. How did you prepare for your viva?
4. How long did your viva take?
5. Is there anything you wish you had done differently?
6. Did the examiners concentrate on any particular section of your thesis?  If so, which?
7. Can you describe any part of your viva where you were pleased with your performance?
8. What was it you did that pleased you?
9. Can you describe any part of your viva where you were dissatisfied with your performance?
10. What was it you did that dissatisfied you?
11. Please give an example of a question that you found hard.
12. Why was it hard?
13. What was the outcome of your viva?
14. Please give some examples of the sort of corrections you need to make (if any).
15. Were they classed as minor or major?
16. Do you have any tips for looking and feeling confident in front of the examiners?
17. Can you think of any good advice that you would give to students who are preparing for their viva?

Blogging for research

In yesterday's researchers' session, I led a discussion about blogging for research. I gave a bit of background about my interest in blogging, which I first talked about in one of these sessions almost two years ago (see my original post here). I also talked briefly about a session discussing blogging at the University of Pittsburgh last November - my blogpost describing that session is available here.

Yesterday's discussion covered a range of useful topics including:

• How blog use by researchers may differ depending on their disciplinary perspectives - for example, issues surrounding commercially sensitive information which are a particular consideration in chemoinformatics projects, or the more detailed, reflective approach to methodology development which is such a significant part of the social science research process.
• How other social media tools - such as Twitter and Facebook - can be used to engage with potential research participants - and may themselves form the basis for research studies.
• The range of audiences which a blogger may be writing for (people I know, people I'd like my research to help) and the actual audience which a blog might reach (potentially a global audience and including people who are willing to engage in the discussion and to comment, question and criticise).
• The tension between all the things which a researcher could potentially post about, and those things which the individual researcher feels comfortable discussing in such a public forum. This may be further complicated by ethical considerations, or issues relating to prior publication.
• Using blogs such as this one (and these discussion sessions) to engage in a more collaborative and open way to address common problems encountered by researchers, by exploring practical questions such as "what survey tool should I use?"
• Using the blog (and the discussion sessions) to provide an opportunity for people further along in the PhD process to reflect back on their experiences. In particular, the viva experience was identified as something which could potentially be demystified by future discussions / posts.

In the course of the discussion about this final point, I mentioned a really helpful discussion led by Liz Brewster back in February 2011 - "Things I wish I'd known before I started my PhD" - this is the link to the post.

I was also asked about the most popular post on my own blog. At the time, I couldn't recall which this was but, having checked the statistics, this post about PG Cafe Forum from May 2011 is at the top of the list. At the time PG Cafe Forum didn't have it's own website, and it seems that my blog entry was one of a relatively small number of Google-able sources with these words in the title - it seems that by giving the post that title, I was engaging in some unintentional search engine optimisation!

Blog-post journal club

At the researchers' discussion yesterday (where the discussion topic was blogging), I briefly mentioned that I am co-organising a new online journal club for information literacy, that has had two blog-post discussions so far. The blog is here: http://infolitjournalclub.blogspot.co.uk/
I have also co-hosted a journal club in Second Life for a couple of years: this shows some snippets of the first meeting in 2010.





I will be talking about journal clubs in one of the future researcher discussions. Marshall Dozier (my SL Journal Club co-organiser) and I are doing some research into the club, and have done a literature search. A good starting point is:

Deenadayalan, Y. et al (2008) How to run an effective journal club: a systematic review. Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice, 14 (5), 898-911.

Information Retrieval (but not as we know it)

Last month, James Wallace bravely volunteered to lead a discussion based on his project work.  In so doing, he proved the title of this post to be wrong.

He is the second member of the chemoinformatics group to post on this blog (after Ben Allen) and he did an excellent job of helping the rest of us to understand the kind of work the group does.

There are occasional signs of bemusement amongst members of the iSchool about the position of chemoinformatics.  It is not always obvious how its work relates to that of others in the school who deal with the organisation of libraries, and the management of information in businesses.  But James began his talk with a few words that fitted chemoinformatics firmly at the heart of the iSchool: words such as 'classification', 'organisation', 'information retrieval' and 'database'.

It quickly became clear that he was using tools with which we were all familiar, but applying them to a subject that most of didn't understand (the classification of molecular structures).  What was interesting though, was the extent to which the nature of information retrieval (IR) he was discussing seemed historical.  Anyone involved with IR pre-Google would have found themselves on familiar territory.  One of the questions raised was whether or not a Google-type approach would be relevant to chemoinformatics.  The feeling was that it probably wouldn't - in part because it may be necessary to have a critical mass of users before a system such as PageRank could be useful.  I don't know whether or not that's true, but if it is, it would be interesting to know what the critical mass might be, and what factors would cause it to vary.