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    Frustration and ennui among Amazon MTurk workers
    (Springer Nature on behalf of the Psychonomic Society, Inc, 2023-09) Fowler C; Jiao J; Pitts M
    Academics are increasingly turning to crowdsourcing platforms to recruit research participants. Their endeavors have benefited from a proliferation of studies attesting to the quality of crowdsourced data or offering guidance on managing specific challenges associated with doing crowdsourced research. Thus far, however, relatively little is known about what it is like to be a participant in crowdsourced research. Our analysis of almost 1400 free-text responses provides insight into the frustrations encountered by workers on one widely used crowdsourcing site: Amazon's MTurk. Some of these frustrations stem from inherent limitations of the MTurk platform and cannot easily be addressed by researchers. Many others, however, concern factors that are directly controllable by researchers and that may also be relevant for researchers using other crowdsourcing platforms such as Prolific or CrowdFlower. Based on participants' accounts of their experiences as crowdsource workers, we offer recommendations researchers might consider as they seek to design online studies that demonstrate consideration for respondents and respect for their time, effort, and dignity.
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    Wisdom of the crowds : developing a social media platform for socially responsible research : a thesis by publication. EMBARGOED to 6 September 2025.
    (Massey University, 2023) Yu, Ji
    The recent proliferation of social media and the underlying technical applications have provided important opportunities for researchers to obtain wisdom-of-the-crowds (WoC)-type data to address their research questions for the benefit of society. In particular, complex or wicked social problems, e.g., COVID-19-like issues, may need more attention from researchers. As the contemporary world is filled with uncertainty and highly unpredictable, such kinds of problems are increasingly emerging, which require appropriate attention from researchers as well as new ways to tackle them. However, most currently available social media applications have not been designed with researchers as their primary audience, and issues, such as ethical concerns and data acquisition restrictions, are also of concern with current applications. To better fulfil the needs of researchers, and address the challenges, this study designed and developed an experimental and research-oriented social media platform, Wisenet, for socially responsible research (SRR), which refers to studies that are conducted with consideration for the benefit of society at large. Wisenet is positioned as a specialized platform for researchers, enabling them to generate, collect, and analyze WoC-type data in a research-oriented environment. The mission of the platform is to provide valuable, accessible, ethically sourced data and analysis for researchers and to facilitate participants’ interest, interaction, and cognitive skills while maintaining the values of ethical principles and social responsibility. Wisenet reaches and engages target participants – people over 50 – to obtain their perspectives on current significant social problems. People over 50 have been selected as the target group because their relatively high level of accumulated life experience makes them more likely to be able to provide meaningful insights on current social issues. Further, offering such insights may require them to use, reflect on, and synthesize their wisdom, knowledge, and experience, and these can be a pathway to develop or maintain their cognitive capabilities. Therefore, participating in Wisenet can be beneficial for both people over 50 and researchers. A design science research methodology (DSRM) approach is employed, which includes six stages: problem identification and motivation, defining the objectives of a solution, design and development, demonstration, evaluation, and communication. Socio-technical theory and WoC provide the main theoretical underpinnings of this study, and along with SRR principles, guide both the purpose of the study and the design and development of the platform. Both qualitative and quantitative data can be generated and collected from the platform, and advanced data analytics methods (e.g., sentiment analysis and topic modelling) are employed to analyse data for WoC. The demonstration and evaluation phases provide evidence of the efficacy, effectiveness, usefulness and ease of use of this newly developed platform. For the contributions, this study mainly provides an artefactual contribution, i.e., Wisenet. It is a comprehensive information system artefact, integrating the technology, social, and information artefacts. Additionally, this study contributes to theoretical understanding by applying design principles (i.e., interaction, understanding, trust and ethics, and simplicity) in the design and development of the artefact. While some of these principles may be found discussed in design literature, this study takes a comprehensive approach by integrating them to guide the design and development of the platform, and they can be used to design similar artefacts in the future. For the research implications, Wisenet can be generalized as a class of artefact, which is a type of online platform focusing on generating WoC-type data for various purposes. Future research may develop a corresponding design theory to create this class of artefact. As for practical implications, this study mainly demonstrates a proof-of-concept, which shows the functional feasibility of Wisenet, and partially demonstrates the proof-of-value level implication, in which stakeholders (i.e., researchers) can use Wisenet to create value. In addition, Wisenet could also have important applications for both business and government; for example, in the development of policies and processes that affect people over 50. Wisenet also has practical implications for commercial social media providers. It emphasizes the idea that instead of concentrating solely on profits, providers may also consider promoting ethical, trustworthy, and socially responsible online environments for the benefit of society and their companies.
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    The search for favourite places using the "My Favourite Place" web application. A geospatial interpretation of locations, descriptions and activities : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Information Sciences (MInfSc) in Geoinformatics and User Interface Design at Massey University, Albany Campus, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2021-02-21) Richardson, Nora Johanna Vitoria
    In this study, data was collected through an online survey to find out people’s favourite places in New Zealand and Wales. A web application called, “My Favourite Place”, was designed and built with simple user interface design aspects and a Leaflet map in order to find favourite places. The website was launched on the worldwide web to generate interest from the public to participate in the survey. Participants were invited to complete one task of submitting the coordinates of their favourite places when using the embedded interactive map. Three surveys were conducted. The first survey had 9 respondents who tested various user interface design aspects. The second and third surveys collected a total of 128 respondents who had submitted coordinates of their favourite places in New Zealand and Wales. The results of the first survey showed that people found the text colour red hard to read, the text colours blue and yellow easier to read, preferred using check boxes more than radio buttons, preferred blue font more than black font, and preferred red buttons more than black buttons. The results for the second survey of 114 respondents from New Zealand showed that people liked their favourite places because it was attractive, and because they enjoyed walking activities. The results of the third survey of 14 respondents from Wales showed that they valued attractive places, and its intrinsic values. Also, there were correlations of positive agreement for favourite places between the age groups of 40 to 49 year olds, and 50 to 59 year olds from New Zealand. Finally, the results of this study showed that a favourite place is often associated with sense of place values, activities, human relationships, beauty, and safety.
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    Assessing the effectiveness of crowdsourced geographic information for solid waste management in Timor-Leste : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Information Sciences (Information Technology) at Massey University, Albany, New Zealand
    (Massey University, 2019) da Conceição Baptista, Elizabeth
    Dili, the capital city of Timor-Leste has been faced with serious solid waste problems in recent years. Responding to this issue, the government has adopted various policies including setting up solid waste collection sites in community areas and outsourcing collection to the private sector to collect waste directly from homes in several areas. Despite, these efforts, waste is still found scattered on the roads and disposed of in rivers and open lands. A proper solid waste management strategy is necessary to transform the city into a clean city. In order to develop an effective solid waste management strategy, reliable data and public participation are required. This study, therefore, investigated whether crowdsourcing, in particular, Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) can effectively be used to collect data about solid waste disposal and collection practices in Dili and raise awareness of the impact of waste disposal practices among the public. The study result demonstrated that crowdsourcing is a viable method for collecting solid waste data. Challenges such as collecting accurate location-specific data still remain, hence, the crowdsourced dataset may not entirely substitute for the usual traditional dataset. At this stage, however, the collected data can still be utilized as a supplementary data source. In the future, by improving data collection methodologies, such as using smaller rewards or providing necessary facilities, a crowdsourcing-based data collection method could be utilized as an adequate substitute for traditional data source because of its ability to collect data in real- time with lower operational costs. This approach is feasible for a developing country such as Timor-Leste where critical area such as waste management has less priority for funding.