Thread:Mdscntst/@comment-8-20160609183035/@comment-3169070-20161224084831

Online Consent Form

I am Jeremy Foote, a PhD Student in the Department of Communication Studies at Northwestern University.

I am part of a team that is conducting a research study to learn more about the reasons that people start new online communities, as well as the goals that founders have for their communities

If you agree to participate, you will be asked to answer survey questions about the community that you recently created. We will also use an API, or application programming interface, to gather publicly available information about your community, such as how many people contribute to it. APIs allow programmers to have controlled access to the data on a website, and we will use only official APIs, and will only gather public information.

Your participation in this study does not involve any risk to you beyond that of everyday life.

You are not likely to have any direct benefit from being in this research study.

Taking part in this study may help researchers to better understand how typical online communities differ from large-scale communities. We also hope to learn more about the difference in motivation and demographic makeup of community founders versus community contributors.

Participation in this study will involve no cost to you. We anticipate that the survey will take 10-15 minutes. You will not be paid for participating in this study.

This survey will not gather personally identifiable information. We will gather your username and the name of the community that you started, and will use that to connect your responses to the data about your community. The results of this survey will be made public, but when the survey data is released, your username and the name of your community will be removed. A version of the data that includes your username and community name may be shared with the Wikia company to help them to improve their software.

This survey is being hosted by Qualtrics and involves a secure connection. Terms of Service, addressing confidentiality, may be viewed at http://www.qualtrics.com/terms-of-service/.

If you have any questions about this study you may contact: Darren Gergle, who is the person in charge of this research study and can be reached at dgergle@northwestern.edu. You can also contact Jeremy Foote; jdfoote@u.northwestern.edu. Questions about your rights as a research subject may be directed to the Institutional Review Board (IRB) Office of Northwestern University at (312) 503-9338. This project is approved under IRB #STU00202608.

If you want a copy of this consent for your records, you can print it from the screen. If you would you like documentation linking you to this research study, please email your request to the Principal Investigator at dgergle@northwestern.edu.

If you wish to participate, and if you are at least 18 years old, please select the Accept button below to begin the survey.

If you do not wish to participate in this study, please select the Decline button, and your session will end.

Sincerely,

Jeremy Foote

Department of Communication Studies, Northwestern University

jdfoote@u.northwestern.edu

Darren Gergle

Department of Communication Studies, Northwestern University

847-467-1221

dgergle@northwestern.edu