Designing Massive Online Social Experiments
Project Description
This project uses online interactive platforms to investigate the ways that social interactions affect political, social, and economic outcomes. We will recruit a large subject pool whose members will interact over multiple occasions to perform a variety of group tasks. Some issues that we will investigate include social conformity, the development of cultural traditions, economic inequality, cultural transmission, and the ways that networks contribute to all of these phenomena. This project is at a very early stage, and students will have the opportunity to participate in the development of a project from the first steps. Further, given that there are several streams of research, the specific topic can be matched to the interests of the applicant.
Supervisor
HENDRY, David James
Quota
2
Course type
UROP1100
UROP2100
UROP3100
UROP4100
Applicant's Roles
The applicant’s role may include conducting literature reviews, designing experiments, custom software development, data analysis, and managing subjects. The applicants will be required to complete an online ethics course for human subjects research that takes about 3 hours. No specialized prior knowledge is required, and the specific tasks can be matched with the applicant’s skill level and interests. Students with no prior knowledge of programming or software for statistical analysis are encouraged to learn the basics of at least one software platform for some aspect of the project (e.g., Python for development of the online interactive platform, R for statistical analysis). The most important criteria for the applicant are that they are interested in the topic, conscientious, and willing to learn.
Applicant's Learning Objectives
Students will learn to formulate research questions, conduct literature reviews, design interactive experiments, and oversee and manage a large online subject pool. The project will give students hands-on experience with various aspects of experimental design and data collection.
Complexity of the project
Challenging