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A new, open, field-wide resource for online studies - the Parent and Researcher Collaborative (PaRC)

  • 1.  A new, open, field-wide resource for online studies - the Parent and Researcher Collaborative (PaRC)

    Posted 04-24-2020 16:12
    Dear Colleagues,

    We know many of you are converting to online testing during the pandemic. We are writing to introduce a new open platform, available to everyone doing online research with children, and we invite you to join our Parent and Researcher Collaborative (PaRC)! We have created a website (https://childrenhelpingscience.com) connecting families and researchers. Researchers recruiting children can list and showcase their studies on this website, and families looking for opportunities to participate can search and browse various studies. When a family finds a study they want to do, they click on a link to go to whatever website the researcher has set up for participants.

    The vision of PaRC is to provide a single, crowd-sourced, user-friendly way to channel families to studies from researchers anywhere in the world. This will make it easier for parents and children to contribute to science and easier for researchers to recruit participants for their online research.
     
    Importantly, researchers retain full independence in recruiting for and running their studies: although families who find one study on the website will hopefully then participate in many more, there is no central database of families, and the studies are not "hosted" on the website. Instead, parents choose which researchers to contact. Think of it as a "craigslist" for online studies -- the more of us advertise our studies through the website, the more we will benefit from our collective effort!
     
    We hope you will check it out and find it helpful!  The link is here: https://childrenhelpingscience.com/ and the password is baby (for the moment, it is open only to researchers and so it is password protected).

    You might be wondering: "How can I list my study here?" It's easy! You can click [here] to see a picture overview, or read the rest of this paragraph: Just navigate to the bottom of the page and you will see an "Add your study" link. This will take you to a form where you can provide all the necessary information, including things that do appear on the site (e.g., the picture that will identify your study) and things that are necessary to submit but are not parent-facing (e.g., information about your IRB/ethics approval). Importantly, we want to be as inclusive as possible. You can list specific inclusion criteria, and we would love to include studies that are recruiting children who speak languages other than English, are part of special populations, etc.

    Here are some other things to keep in mind about posting your study:
    • The list is study-based (rather than lab- or institution-based). Our goal is to ensure as broad and inclusive a platform as possible.
    • You can post as many studies as you like and update them as often as you like.
    • We will send you an email when your study has been posted.
    • To avoid having parents click on studies that are no longer active, you will get an email every few weeks asking if you want to keep the study up; otherwise, the study will be removed.
    • Study listings are randomly shuffled each time the page is loaded, so that different studies appear at the top of the list.
    • The website has a way for parents to search for studies by age group, so your study will appear on the pages for any relevant age groups.
    Next Steps
     
    Please note: the site is currently open only to researchers in the field. It is otherwise embargoed.  Please do not share information about this link with families or media just yet -- our official open launch to parents will follow in a week or so. We will send a follow-up email on the official open launch date when we remove the password from the site to let you know that you can begin recruiting here. In the meantime, if you are both a parent and a researcher, of course, please feel free to enroll your child in the many studies already posted.

    When the link is live, you will be able to send a link that will direct parents to your dedicated "read more" page, featuring your study. Once families have participated in your study, we hope you will encourage them to go back and check out other studies on the site. We'd love to see this site featured everywhere.
     
    If you have specific questions about the site, please feel free to contact us at our email address below. If you have general suggestions, resources, or hard-won experience that might be helpful to other researchers embarking on online testing, then please continue the discussion on this thread.
     
    Thanks in advance for checking this out! We hope you will contribute. The more studies we can post, the more families will use this resource -- and more participants means better science for everyone.


    Sincerely,

    parc@childrenhelpingscience.com
    Mark Sheskin
    Elizabeth Bonawitz
    Hyowon Gweon
    Julian Jara-Ettinger
    Candice Mills
    Laura Schulz

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    Parent Researcher Collaborative
    https://childrenhelpingscience.com
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  • 2.  RE: A new, open, field-wide resource for online studies - the Parent and Researcher Collaborative (PaRC)

    Posted 05-04-2020 16:58
    Dear Colleagues,

    We posted last week (above) to announce the new website ChildrenHelpingScience.com -- where researchers from all over the world can post online studies, and families from all over the world can find them. Especially during this time when many people are sheltering in place, we hope this will be a wonderful way for families to do fun activities and for researchers to advance science.

    We are now ready to launch the website to the public at large and start advertising to parents! Whether you have already submitted a study or not, we would love for you to spread the word however you see best. You might post on social media, mention it to parent groups you are a part of, post it to community groups you are a part of, or anything else you think of!

    You can find social media posts you can share on our Facebook page and our Twitter page. However you choose to spread the word, here are some suggested best practices and wording, so that we have a consistent message:
    • If you have already posted a study on ChildrenHelpingScience.com, you can recruit parents specifically to your study with a direct link to your study's page. This way, parents can not only participate in your study but also help science by participating in other studies on ChildrenHelpingScience.com
    • When you advertise your study and the website, consider using our slogan "Fun for families, serious for science". Both parts of that are good messages: we hope families enjoy these activities, and families should know that they are making a difference to developmental science!
    • There are already many studies available on the website from many universities: this is an exciting development for the entire field worldwide, rather than something about any individual study or university.
    • There are a wide variety of study topics, and opportunities for nearly any child!
    • If you post on Facebook or Twitter, feel free to share/retweet our posts, or to mention our accounts twitter.com/helping_science and facebook.com/ChildrenHelpingScience
    • You can also use the hashtag #ChildrenHelpingScience (especially on twitter)
    You can see more details, and example posts, at: https://childrenhelpingscience.com/social-media-guidelines

    Thank you for helping us develop this collaborative tool that will benefit us all as a research community and help us to keep producing the wonderful research that we do!
     
    Sincerely,
    parc@childrenhelpingscience.com
    Mark Sheskin
    Elizabeth Bonawitz
    Hyowon Gweon
    Julian Jara-Ettinger
    Candice Mills
    Laura Schulz


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    Parent Researcher Collaborative
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