[Talk-us] Fwd: Open survey on participation biases in OSM

Tue Sep 5 12:36:58 UTC 2017

Sorry, this was drawn to my attention.
I can vouch that Zoe Gardner is a researcher at Nottingham University Geospatial Institute. Her institutional webpage is here: Zoe Gardner - The University of Nottingham

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Zoe Gardner - The University of Nottingham
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Zoe took the time to come along to the Nottingham OSM July meeting, and I've bumped into her at a University facility on the Jubilee Campus site when I had a further discussion of her research (and probably caused her coffee to get a bit cool, in which case my apologies). I also believe, and I think it is stated in some of her emails, that she is collaborating with Dr Peter Mooney of Maynooth University in Ireland. He was a co-editor on a recent scholarly multi-author book on OSM, and has presented work at various SotM conferences.
I have no affiliation with Nottingham University nor with her research. I therefore cannot say why her institutional email address has not been used, although I would expect that for this type of activity a distinct email address is probably useful to avoid confusion with regular day-job communications.
I have not checked, but normally research of this kind, storing personal data, will need some approval via an ethics committee. Furthermore institutions in Britain and Europe need to adhere to current (and future) European data protection legislation.
Requiring researchers to seek approval for their research via OSMF, or local chapters (affiliated or otherwise), would, in my view, raise a rather high bar for academics, and one which may be perceived to be contra OSM's openness. On the other hand the it may be appropriate for OSMF to consider guidelines w.r.t. collection of personal data of mappers for academic research, particularly as the new European directive comes into force next year.
HTH,
Jerry CloughSK53

      From: Charlotte Wolter <techlady at techlady.com>
 To: Talk-US at openstreetmap.org 
 Sent: Monday, 4 September 2017, 19:25
 Subject: [Talk-us] Fwd: Open survey on participation biases in OSM

Follks,

          It wouldbe nice if we could get some confirmation that this is a real researchprojects being done by an actual researcher at Nottingham. If it islegit, why is the return email address from Gmail rather than theuniversity?
          Is theresome mechanism that we can set up to confirm that the research is forreal, such as running it through the US board first? I don't mindcontributing to a survey. I just want to be sure it is for real.

Charlotte

From: Zoe Gardner<zoegardner3 at gmail.com>
To: talk-us at openstreetmap.org ...snip... talk-au at openstreetmap.org
Subject: [Talk-us] Open survey on participation biases in OSM

Dear OSM talk subscriber

I am a Research Fellow in the Nottingham Geospatial Institute at theUniversity of Nottingham in the UK, interested in participation biases ingeospatial crowd-sourced projects such as OSM and other VolunteeredGeographical Information (VGI) projects. My current research project isconcerned with the way in which participation biases in OSM maypotentially affect the usability of the data that is collected andsubsequently what is available to location-based service providers thatuse OSM as their primary geospatial database.
The project is motivated by recent research that has found a strong malebias in OSM participation. This has led to assertions that variousgeospatial knowledge could be under represented or poorly recorded on themap. However, the actual consequences of this bias remain little exploredor reported. By collecting information about contributors to OSM, whichcan then be analyzed along with their editing patterns, the impacts ofthis bias might begin to be measured and therefore better understood. Ihave therefore published an online survey designed to collect informationdirectly from OSM editors and I would like to invite as many of you aspossible to participate. The survey is anonymous and takes a couple ofminutes to complete.
If you are an OSM contributor and are interested in or would like toparticipate in the study, please click on the link below, which will takeyou to the Bristol Online Survey website where you will find moreinformation and an opportunity to participate in the survey. As a smallincentive, at the close of the survey in a few weeks' time, 60respondents will be drawn at random to receive a £15 Amazon voucher.
To participate in the survey, click on the link below:
https://nottingham.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/osm-user-profiles
Please do think about participating. It is hoped that knowledge about theway participation biases impact on crowd-sourced maps will enable newstrategies to be developed to address any resulting voids in thegeospatial information provided by amateur mappers. In turn this couldstrengthen the role played by platforms such as OSM in urban planning andsustainability, and could raise the profile of the important mapping workthat you all do.
In the meantime, if you would like to know more about me, my researchactivities or the project, please visit my University webpage (linkbelow) and do not hesitate to get in touch directly or via the OSMmessaging service.
https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/engineering/people/zoe.gardner
Thank you

Zoe
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 Charlotte Wolter
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