Fatima: a digital platform to transform qualitative reasearch in marginalised sectors

Fatima：一个转变边缘化领域定性研究的数字平台

• 批准号: 80212
• 金额: $ 20.67万
• 依托单位: GEORGE WISCOMBE LIMITED
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Collaborative R&D
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2020 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=80212
• 关键词: Fatima; digital; platform; transform; qualitative

Qualitative research will underpin effective commercial activities, NGO interventions and government policies to address the direct impacts of COVID-19, and more generally for the UK's wider socio-economic recovery.However, whilst the elderly, socio-economically disadvantaged and less-integrated ethnic demographics are impacted most, COVID-19 has further increased the already unmet challenge of qualitative research within these marginalised and often vulnerable groups.With the most effective face-to-face data gathering - including interviews, focus groups and field work - prevented by social distancing and travel restrictions, remotely undertaking qualitative research within these groups faces fundamental barriers to accessibility and scale due to:* Poor access to broadband, computers and smartphones compatible with most connectivity platforms, and overall low rates of digital literacy* Lack of technology to manage data gathering from respondents who can only be reached via landline or 'non-Smart' mobile feature phones, and integrating effective research workflows across multiple platforms* Study design and agility to extract the complex and sensitive multi-dimensional sentiment data, given these respondents' specific scenarios -- many targets for researchers in these marginalised and vulnerable groups may also have compromised capacity to articulate direct responses for reasons of safeguarding or otherwise* Scalability of costly manually-intensive analysis methodologies to clearly identify and correlate these dependencies across more complex topic models and other hidden qualitative data variablesDespite an increased need for actionable outputs, this work has therefore largely been suspended, both by commercially-active and vertically-integrated research organisations.Existing digital toolsets for qualitative data gathering are consumer-focussed web/smartphone-based applications, which are predominantly designed to meet the needs of large-scale corporate market researchers. These commonly use automated speech-to-text transcription, but support only very low-level sentiment analysis for simple tightly-constrained research scenarios.In response, Maido are developing Fatima, a digital platform for qualitative data collection and analysis, which uniquely connects the end-to-end research value chain for marginalised respondents who can only be accessed via feature phone conversations.Maido have already completed a successful proof-of-concept development, realising the core data architecture and remote workflows for recorded data gathering. Leveraging their minimum-viable-product and proven transcription and natural language processing toolsets, Maido now seek to fully develop the qualitative features and programmatic functionality into a scaled full-platform prototype, with a high level of analytical automation.

定性研究将为有效的商业活动、非政府组织干预和政府政策奠定基础，以应对“新冠肺炎”的直接影响，乃至更广泛的英国社会经济复苏。然而，尽管老年人、社会经济弱势群体和融合程度较低的种族人口受到的影响最大，但新冠肺炎进一步增加了这些边缘群体和往往是弱势群体中本已未得到满足的定性研究挑战。由于最有效的面对面数据收集--包括访谈、焦点小组和实地考察--受到社会距离和旅行限制的阻碍，在这些群体中远程开展定性研究面临着根本性的障碍，原因是：*宽带接入不畅，计算机和智能手机与大多数连接平台兼容，数字识字率总体较低*缺乏管理从受访者那里收集数据的技术，这些受访者只能通过固定电话或非智能移动功能电话联系到他们，并跨多个平台集成有效的研究工作流程*研究设计和灵活性，以提取复杂而敏感的多维情绪数据，鉴于这些受访者的特定情况--这些边缘化和脆弱群体中的许多研究人员的目标也可能出于保护或其他原因而损害表达直接反应的能力*昂贵的手动密集型分析方法的可扩展性，以跨更复杂的主题模型和其他隐藏的定性数据变量清楚地识别和关联这些依赖关系。尽管对可操作输出的需求增加，但这项工作在很大程度上已经被商业上活跃的和垂直整合的研究机构暂停。现有的用于定性数据收集的数字工具集是以消费者为中心的基于网络/智能手机的应用程序，这些应用程序主要是为了满足大规模企业市场研究人员的需求而设计的。这些通常使用自动语音到文本转录，但仅支持非常低级别的情感分析，用于简单、严格限制的研究场景。作为回应，Maido正在开发Fatima，这是一个用于定性数据收集和分析的数字平台，它为被边缘化的受访者提供独特的端到端研究价值链连接，这些受访者只能通过功能电话通话访问。Maido已经成功完成了概念验证开发，实现了用于记录数据收集的核心数据架构和远程工作流。利用其最低可行产品和经过验证的转录和自然语言处理工具集，Maido现在寻求将定性特征和编程功能充分开发为具有高水平分析自动化的规模化全平台原型。