Measuring the Societal Benefit of Online Civic 'self-help' Sites

研究将分四个主要阶段进行。第一阶段将涉及对学术文献中现有工作的评估，以及MySociety和类似团体提交的更具体的报告，以介绍其在线用户及其网站的社会价值。我们将确定实践者和学术知识在方法和理论上的关键差距，并具体说明我们的研究问题和我们将研究的地点。在研究的第二阶段，我们将在此基础上设计分析，以提供丰富的定性和定量证据，以解决我们关于衡量场地影响的中心研究问题。在第三阶段的研究中，我们将进行实证数据的收集。这将包括在MySociety网站上进行的四个两波小组调查-他们为你工作，修复我的街道，修复我的交通，并给他们写信。这些调查将被用来确定新用户和那些较少参与公民和政治事务以及来自非典型参与性背景的用户。参与第一波调查的所有个人将被邀请参加分析的扩展，在与网站互动后的三个月内完成在线时间日记。首次使用的用户将特别受到后续邀请的影响。时间日记最好是每周填写一次，并跟踪用户的社会、政治和社区活动。时间日记和完成第一波调查的人将被邀请在时间日记完成后完成第二波调查。这将衡量社会和政治信任的水平，社会联系，以及对他们解决自己和其他/社区/政治问题的能力的信心。在研究的最后阶段，我们将与选定的时间日记作者进行在线焦点小组，并利用调查和时间日记数据进行三角测量，以解决以下关键问题：是什么促使网站参与，如果第一次使用转化为进一步的激进主义，如何以及为什么会发生这种情况。一旦结果产生，我们将为我的社会和整个志愿部门的传播编写一份报告，其中将总结我们的调查结果，并就活动和社区网站的首次用户最有可能采取的工具和行动提出建议，以及这些工具和行动如何作为触发器来创建技能、信心和网络，使他们能够继续开展自我发起的行动。我们还将就组织如何监控和衡量这种“转换”提出建议。最后，我们将准备一篇学术论文，利用这些数据对这些公共服务网站的在线用户进行第一次随时间推移的定性研究。小组元素将使我们能够获得一个独特的洞察力，了解一个人对网站的访问在多大程度上影响了随后的活动，特别是通过处理个人问题或当地关注的问题，他们感到更有能力处理自己生活中的问题和更广泛的社区/社会问题，他们在多大程度上实现了本来无法完成的事情，更好地准备在后续问题出现时解决这些问题。

The research will be conducted in four main phases. The first phase will involve an assessment of the existing work in the academic literature and also more specific reports by MySociety and similar groups to profile their online users and the societal value of their sites. We will identify the key gaps in practitioner and academic knowledge, both methodologically and theoretically, and specify our research questions and the sites we will study. Based on this review in the second phase of the research we will design the analysis to provide the type of rich qualitative and quantitative evidence to address our central research questions regarding measuring the sites' impact. In the third phase of the research we will carry our empirical data collection. This will consist of four two-wave panel surveys fielded on the MySociety sites - They Work For You, Fix My Street, Fix My Transport and Write To Them. The surveys will be used to identify the new users and those that are less involved in civic and political matters and from a non-typical participatory background. All individuals participating in wave 1 of the surveys will be invited to take part in an extension to the analysis by completing an online time diary over a three month period following their interaction with the site. First time users will be targeted in particular with follow up invitations. The time diaries will be filled in ideally on a weekly basis and track users social, political and communal activities. Time diarists and those completing wave 1 of the survey will then be invited to complete wave 2 once the time diaries are completed. This will measure levels of social and political trust, social connectedness, and feelings of confidence in their ability to solve their own and other/community/political problems. In the final phase of the research we will conduct online focus groups with selected time diarists and triangulate with survey and time diary data to address the key questions of what motivated participation on the site, if first-time use was converted into further activism how and why that occurred. Once the results are produced we will prepare a report for MySociety and dissemination across the voluntary sector that will summarize our findings and provide recommendations about what tools and actions are most likely to be undertaken by first time users of campaigning and community sites, and how these act as triggers to create the skills confidence and networks to allow them to continue to undertake self-initiated activism. We will also include recommendations on how this 'conversion' can be monitored and measured by organizations. Finally we will prepare a paper for academic publication that will utilize the data to present the first qualitative over time study of online users of these public service sites. The panel element will allow us to gain a unique insight into how far an individual's visit to the site influenced subsequent activities and particularly the extent to which, by dealing with a personal problem or local concern they felt more able to deal with problems in their own lives and their neighbourhood/society more generally, how far they achieved things they could not otherwise have done, were better equipped to solve subsequent problems when they arose.