62 research outputs found
Characterizing the Global Crowd Workforce: A Cross-Country Comparison of Crowdworker Demographics
Micro-task crowdsourcing is an international phenomenon that has emerged
during the past decade. This paper sets out to explore the characteristics of
the international crowd workforce and provides a cross-national comparison of
the crowd workforce in ten countries. We provide an analysis and comparison of
demographic characteristics and shed light on the significance of micro-task
income for workers in different countries. This study is the first large-scale
country-level analysis of the characteristics of workers on the platform Figure
Eight (formerly CrowdFlower), one of the two platforms dominating the
micro-task market. We find large differences between the characteristics of the
crowd workforces of different countries, both regarding demography and
regarding the importance of micro-task income for workers. Furthermore, we find
that the composition of the workforce in the ten countries was largely stable
across samples taken at different points in time
Bridging the gap:a review of dose investigations in paediatric investigation plans
Aims In the EU, development of new medicines for children should follow a prospectively agreed paediatric investigation plan (PIP). Finding the right dose for children is crucial but challenging due to the variability of pharmacokinetics across age groups and the limited sample sizes available. We examined strategies adopted in PIPs to support paediatric dosing recommendations to identify common assumptions underlying dose investigations and the attempts planned to verify them in children. Methods We extracted data from 73 PIP opinions recently adopted by the Paediatric Committee of the European Medicines Agency. These opinions represented 79 medicinal development programmes and comprised a total of 97 dose investigation studies. We identified the design of these dose investigation studies, recorded the analyses planned and determined the criteria used to define target doses. Results Most dose investigation studies are clinical trials (83 of 97) that evaluate a single dosing rule. Sample sizes used to investigate dose are highly variable across programmes, with smaller numbers used in younger children (< 2 years). Many studies (40 of 97) do not pre-specify a target dose criterion. Of those that do, most (33 of 57 studies) guide decisions using pharmacokinetic data alone. Conclusions Common assumptions underlying dose investigation strategies include dose proportionality and similar exposure−response relationships in adults and children. Few development programmes pre-specify steps to verify assumptions in children. There is scope for the use of Bayesian methods as a framework for synthesizing existing information to quantify prior uncertainty about assumptions. This process can inform the design of optimal drug development strategies
Systematically Monitoring Social Media: the case of the German federal election 2017
It is a considerable task to collect digital trace data at a large scale and
at the same time adhere to established academic standards. In the context of
political communication, important challenges are (1) defining the social media
accounts and posts relevant to the campaign (content validity), (2)
operationalizing the venues where relevant social media activity takes place
(construct validity), (3) capturing all of the relevant social media activity
(reliability), and (4) sharing as much data as possible for reuse and
replication (objectivity). This project by GESIS - Leibniz Institute for the
Social Sciences and the E-Democracy Program of the University of Koblenz-Landau
conducted such an effort. We concentrated on the two social media networks of
most political relevance, Facebook and Twitter.Comment: PID: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-56149-4, GESIS
Papers 2018|
Measuring motivations of crowdworkers: The multidimensional crowdworker motivation scale
Crowd employment is a new form of short-term and flexible employment which
has emerged during the past decade. In order to understand this new form of
employment, it is crucial to illuminate the underlying motivations of the
workforce involved in it. This paper introduces the Multidimensional
Crowdworker Motivation Scale (MCMS), a scale for measuring the motivation of
crowdworkers on micro-task platforms. The MCMS is theoretically grounded in
self-determination theory and tailored specifically to the context of paid
crowdsourced micro-labor. The scale measures the motivation of crowdworkers
along six motivational dimensions, ranging from amotivation to intrinsic
motivation. We validated the MCMS on data collected in ten countries and three
income groups. Factor analyses demonstrated that the MCMS's six dimensions
showed good model fit, validity, and reliability. Furthermore, our measurement
invariance tests showed that motivations measured with the MCMS are comparable
across countries and income groups, and we present a first cross-country
comparison of crowdworker motivations. This work constitutes an important first
step towards understanding the motivations of the international crowd
workforce.Comment: 33 pages; added section; additional validation; corrected typo
Efficient Adaptive Designs for Clinical Trials of Interventions for COVID-19.
The COVID-19 pandemic has led to an unprecedented response in terms of clinical research activity. An important part of this research has been focused on randomized controlled clinical trials to evaluate potential therapies for COVID-19. The results from this research need to be obtained as rapidly as possible. This presents a number of challenges associated with considerable uncertainty over the natural history of the disease and the number and characteristics of patients affected, and the emergence of new potential therapies. These challenges make adaptive designs for clinical trials a particularly attractive option. Such designs allow a trial to be modified on the basis of interim analysis data or stopped as soon as sufficiently strong evidence has been observed to answer the research question, without compromising the trial's scientific validity or integrity. In this article, we describe some of the adaptive design approaches that are available and discuss particular issues and challenges associated with their use in the pandemic setting. Our discussion is illustrated by details of four ongoing COVID-19 trials that have used adaptive designs
Findings from the Hackathon on Understanding Euroscepticism Through the Lens of Textual Data
We present an overview and the results of a shared-task hackathon that took place as part of a research seminar bringing together a variety of experts and young researchers from the fields of political science, natural language processing and computational social science. The task looked at ways to develop novel methods for political text scaling to better quantify political party positions on European integration and Euroscepticism from the transcript of speeches of three legislations of the European Parliament
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