As part of my doctoral program at FSU’s School of Library and Information Studies, I am required to complete six credits of research collaboration with one or more professors. These are intended to give students a variety of research opportunities, especially if they have not been given the opportunity to be a graduate research assistant on a project or with a research center. Given that I was already working on an NSF-funded VOSS project studying virtual collaboration at and around the Magnet Lab, I wanted my research collaboration to be something different that still interested me, but did not simply duplicate my previous experiences.
My major professor and committee chair, Dr. Michelle Kazmer, suggested I seek out collaborations with professors not yet on my committee. At the time, Dr. Sanghee Oh was advertising a research assistant opportunity on a study evaluating answers to health questions posed on a social question-and-answer (Q&A) site (Yahoo! Answers). I inquired whether she would be open to my participation through a research collaboration, and after some discussion we came to an agreement and understanding. This is reflected in the research collaboration contract and associated forms that I was required to complete prior to enrolling.
Major Products
In my first semester of this collaboration, my first major task was to help with reviewing the literature in this area. Dr. Oh particularly wanted me to focus on literature that she had not included in her dissertation because it was too new or was in an area we had to explore further for this study. I read and wrote summary abstracts of a number of articles, entering these into a Zotero group created for the project; a report generated by Zotero of these abstracts is available for review.
My next task was to review further literature on different types of questions in social Q&A services and on health reference questions, focusing on different taxonomies and classification schema applied with the intention that this would help us select questions to be evaluated by our study participants. I wrote a report for Dr. Oh detailing my findings which my committee may review.
My third task was to help create a list of potential health reference librarians to contact as potential participants for the study. Through extensive searching and data mining online, I created such a list of contact information which can be reviewed by my committee. Other researchers who may be interested in this list can contact myself or Dr. Sanghee Oh to inquire about its use.
In both the spring and summer semesters I also contributed greatly, alongside Dr. Oh’s research assistant Yong Jeong Yi, to constructing, selecting questions for, and administering a survey. This was completed by health reference librarians and questioners (those who posted questions in the Health category of Yahoo! Answers) as part of the study. Yong and I contacted librarians and questioners to ask if they would like to participate, sent them links to the survey if so, and also followed up with reminders and answered participants’ questions about the survey and study. I also helped with the associated forms required for human subjects approval of the study by the FSU Institutional Review Board. Since the study is still ongoing these forms and data are necessarily private, but may be able to be provided to my committee members upon request.
While I have finished my research collaboration credits, I am continuing to work with Dr. Oh and Yong on analysis, presentation, and publication of our results. We presented a poster detailing our initial findings at the ASIST 2011 annual meeting in New Orleans, LA in October; see my publications for more details.
