Galaxy Zoo meets social science

[zookeeperJordan]

Hi, all.

Galaxy Zoo has been incredibly successful in finding dedicated, skilled volunteers - way beyond our wildest dreams. We'd like to know why. After talking with some social scientists, we think we can answer that by systematically asking you about your motivation - what is it that makes you want to participate in this project?

Some of you may be a bit uncomfortable with the idea of participating in a research study. Don't worry: none of the classifications you have done will be included in this study without your explicit permission, and if you do participate, none of your classifications or other answers can be identified with you.

There is a short and long description included below; read one or more of your choosing.

Short answer:
We want to know what our volunteers' motivation is in contributing to this project. We will conduct interviews and surveys asking you what you have gotten out of the site - why is this meaningful for you? All questions are optional. As part of the survey, we will ask for your Galaxy Zoo username, which we will keep anonymous and secure. If you give us your username, we will include your classifications in our study sample. Our goal is to look for correlations between people's self-reported motivation and their activity in classifying galaxies. Our results will be reported in aggregate and will not be able to be identified with any specific person.


Long answer:
We began to consider doing a social science study of Galaxy Zoo a couple months after the project began, when it became clear to us that our project had succeeded beyond our expectations in attracting volunteers. We knew that future projects were planning to open Zoo-like volunteer programs, and we wanted to help them learn from our experience to maximize their impact.

You might remember that we started a forum topic called What makes Galaxy Zoo interesting? to try to answer this question. We got some great responses, and we were starting to see the same themes over and over. We realized that if we could try to pin down these themes more systematically, Galaxy Zoo could make a contribution to social science research as well as astronomy research. Since I'm starting to get involved in education research, I was the logical person to coordinate this study. I read some papers and talked to some experts in the field, and designed the following study.

First, we will interview 100 randomly-chosen Galaxy Zoo volunteers, asking open-ended questions about your motivations for participating, your experience with science, and other things about yourself. Then, we will run a survey, trying to get as many people as possible to respond, asking some of the same questions in a more quantitative manner (for example, asking to rank responses from 1 [agree] to 7 [disagree]). All responses will be optional; if you don't feel comfortable answering one, we're happy to have you skip it and just complete the rest of the interview/survey.

One of the optional questions on the survey will be your Galaxy Zoo username. If you choose to give us your username, we will anonymously include your classification data in the study sample. We will look for correlations between number of galaxies classified, amount of time per galaxy, and agreement with the majority (keeping in mind the points Kate and Anze raise in Kate's blog post about weighting). If we find something, then we have found a correlation between self-reported motivation and activity, which as far as I know would be a new discovery.

When we report the results (hopefully in a psychology or education research journal), we will report the data only in aggregate. For example, we might say something like "20,577 users reported their motivation as 'desire to help science,' and these people spent an average of 1.77 seconds per galaxy" (I am completely making those numbers up as examples.)

As with any university-sponsored research project studying people (in both the U.K. and U.S.), this study must be approved by the ethics boards of the relevant institutions. This should not be a problem - we are just asking questions, and participation is optional - but we need to apply for clearance. I am hoping to turn in that paperwork at the start of next week.



Galaxy Zoo is first and foremost an astronomy project, but we hope to make a contribution to many areas of science. Thanks in advance for your help with all these contributions!

[zookeeperJordan]

I should also say that if you have any questions about the study, feel free to send me a Message on the board.

[veggy]

Sounds really interesting. Happy to help and volunteer, Jordan.  Where do we sign?  If it's a random selection then I'll play if I get chosen.

As well as Seti and other internet based cit/sci projects it might be interesting comparing our motivations with the more traditional amateur  astronomer. 

There are other cit/sci group initiatives outside of astronomy, for instance Coral Cay Conservation, which might be worth logging for any broader survey one day. FWIW, CCC pioneered the use of amateur scuba divers on tropical reef surveys.  Amateurs were trained in basic survey techniques and then  worked under the supervision of a 'real' biologist.  They even paid to take part, which meant that vital surveys of reef habitats in third world countries didn't require financial support  or expensive teams of professional scientists.   

[scaryitalian]

Another volunteer here...

[garrett_cw]

I think this is an excellent idea.  This distributed cooperative human intelligence
application task is a tool that has been useful for you, you intend to use it again,
 and others are likely to use it also.  A better understanding of the self structuring
that takes place and its effect on results and efficacy can surly lead to a better
design of the imposed structure by the initiator of future studies that use this tool.

I cannot think of any pertinent question that you might ask that would be refused.
However, leaving that option open increases the likelihood that people
will participate.  I also think that you have a universe (zooites) that are biased toward participating.

I'm not sure that volunteers are what you want, but if you do here I am.

I posted without spell checking. Hence the edit.

[driller]

I'm happy to oblige if chosen.

Apart from anything else, it may help me define my own motivation, as I find it hard to nail it down. I just know I love to be a part of something like this that piques my interest and where my efforts have concrete results far in excess of anything I could achieve alone.

[Halibut]

It sounds like a really interesting project.  I'd also be happy to participate should I be chosen.

As you have 125,000 volunteers, I'd be interested to know how you'll randomly choose 100 people.  I expect there are many people who classified a few times and then left, those who classify sometimes only, and those who classify all the time.  Would you equally be interested in all types of classifiers?

[Alice]

Volunteer here, obviously - if I count. 

[jules]

Excellent idea! I work with volunteers - albeit in a very different capacity - and constantly have to address issues like motivation and recruitment. It's interesting to see this from a very different viewpoint. Count me in if you decide to recruit rather than pick at random!

[quarkspin]

Hi, all.

Galaxy Zoo has been incredibly successful in finding dedicated, skilled volunteers - way beyond our wildest dreams. We'd like to know why. After talking with some social scientists, we think we can answer that by systematically asking you about your motivation - what is it that makes you want to participate in this project?

Some of you may be a bit uncomfortable with the idea of participating in a research study. Don't worry: none of the classifications you have done will be included in this study without your explicit permission, and if you do participate, none of your classifications or other answers can be identified with you.

There is a short and long description included below; read one or more of your choosing.

Short answer:
We want to know what our volunteers' motivation is in contributing to this project. We will conduct interviews and surveys asking you what you have gotten out of the site - why is this meaningful for you? All questions are optional. As part of the survey, we will ask for your Galaxy Zoo username, which we will keep anonymous and secure. If you give us your username, we will include your classifications in our study sample. Our goal is to look for correlations between people's self-reported motivation and their activity in classifying galaxies. Our results will be reported in aggregate and will not be able to be identified with any specific person.


Long answer:
We began to consider doing a social science study of Galaxy Zoo a couple months after the project began, when it became clear to us that our project had succeeded beyond our expectations in attracting volunteers. We knew that future projects were planning to open Zoo-like volunteer programs, and we wanted to help them learn from our experience to maximize their impact.

You might remember that we started a forum topic called What makes Galaxy Zoo interesting? to try to answer this question. We got some great responses, and we were starting to see the same themes over and over. We realized that if we could try to pin down these themes more systematically, Galaxy Zoo could make a contribution to social science research as well as astronomy research. Since I'm starting to get involved in education research, I was the logical person to coordinate this study. I read some papers and talked to some experts in the field, and designed the following study.

First, we will interview 100 randomly-chosen Galaxy Zoo volunteers, asking open-ended questions about your motivations for participating, your experience with science, and other things about yourself. Then, we will run a survey, trying to get as many people as possible to respond, asking some of the same questions in a more quantitative manner (for example, asking to rank responses from 1 [agree] to 7 [disagree]). All responses will be optional; if you don't feel comfortable answering one, we're happy to have you skip it and just complete the rest of the interview/survey.

One of the optional questions on the survey will be your Galaxy Zoo username. If you choose to give us your username, we will anonymously include your classification data in the study sample. We will look for correlations between number of galaxies classified, amount of time per galaxy, and agreement with the majority (keeping in mind the points Kate and Anze raise in Kate's blog post about weighting). If we find something, then we have found a correlation between self-reported motivation and activity, which as far as I know would be a new discovery.

When we report the results (hopefully in a psychology or education research journal), we will report the data only in aggregate. For example, we might say something like "20,577 users reported their motivation as 'desire to help science,' and these people spent an average of 1.77 seconds per galaxy" (I am completely making those numbers up as examples.)

As with any university-sponsored research project studying people (in both the U.K. and U.S.), this study must be approved by the ethics boards of the relevant institutions. This should not be a problem - we are just asking questions, and participation is optional - but we need to apply for clearance. I am hoping to turn in that paperwork at the start of next week.



Galaxy Zoo is first and foremost an astronomy project, but we hope to make a contribution to many areas of science. Thanks in advance for your help with all these contributions!

I have been waiting for this since AUgust 07 when the enormity of what was happening struck me and were I a psychologist I would have writte papers about it.  I did mention it to a few but they weren't interested.

Great idea and well done so far:
Q

ATB

Q

[veggy]

I think this is an excellent idea.  This distributed cooperative human intelligence
application task is a tool that has been useful for you, you intend to use it again,
 and others are likely to use it also.  A better understanding of the self structuring
that takes place and its effect on results and efficacy can surly lead to a better
design of the imposed structure by the initiator of future studies that use this tool.

I posted without spell checking. Hence the edit.

  That is JUST how social scientists speak!  Love it.

[ElisabethB]

Count me in ! 

[bwhittak]

Possibly also worth looking at correlations with forum participation.

[fluffyporcupine]

another volunteer here too

[artemiit]

Count me in Too!