Research talk:Who edits health-related Wikipedia pages and why?

Hi Nuša! Thank you for submitting your research proposal for review. I've read it over, and also read through your questionnaire and the content on your User page on Commons.

I think your proposal is good, and I don't think you need to do too much work to make it successful. I have a few suggestions for you, which I would like you to respond to on this page before you proceed with your study. If you have any questions, feel free to ask me here: I will be monitoring this page and will notice if you respond.

Suggestions:

1. Please post more of the information about your study that is available on your Commons User page onto this proposal. This is the most appropriate place for it, after all.
2. I don't think that selecting random users is really appropriate for your study, since your sample size is so small and your methods are qualitative... But more importantly, you are unlikely to get a high response rate by simply randomly selecting users who recently edited health-related articles. I would suggest that you supplement this strategy by contacting a small number of editors who are members of health-related WikiProjects. For example, you could contact a member of WikiProject medicine (link below) who edits a lot of health-related articles. Focusing your investigation on editors who are more likely to respond positively will lessen the potential negative impact of your recruitment on the community.
3. Please specify how you intend to contact Wikipedians (probably the best way to do this is to post a message to the users' talk page). Please also confirm that:

1. you will not repeatedly contact the same editors if they do not respond to your request for an interview, or if they decline.
2. you will not 'spam' hundreds of editors with talk page messages
3. you will include a link to this research proposal in the message you use to invite people

That covers most everything, I think. Please leave your answers below! Look forward to hearing from you, Jtmorgan (talk) 02:00, 7 July 2012 (UTC)

Links:

• Wikipedia: A Key Tool for Global Public Health Promotion: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3221335/
• Wikiproject Medicine: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine

Dear Jtmorgan, believe it or not, I have only just noticed your message this moment googeling something in relation to wikipedia and health. I have now carried out my study and have fulfilled all of the proposals/criteria above. I had to change my sampling strategy due to a small community of editors and have indeed contacted members of Wiki Project Medicine. I have not spammed or repeatedly contacted the same editors (as seen on any of my invitee's invitation message) and I did include the link to this research proposal on my commons page (but not in my invitation). I hope this will not cause any issues. I also much admit that I have had a better response rate than anticipated and I am due to hand in my results in two weeks time. Please let me know if this has caused any further issues. Kind Regards, Nuša Hydra Rain (talk) 14:56, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

Study published

The study has now been published as Farič, Nuša; Henry Potts (2014-12-03). "Motivations for Contributing to Health-Related Articles on Wikipedia: An Interview Study". Journal of Medical Internet Research 16 (12): e260. ISSN 1438-8871. doi:10.2196/jmir.3569.