Research:Cognitive styles and other motivations for participating in Wikipedia - Meta

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Research:Cognitive styles and other motivations for participating in Wikipedia

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Contents
1 Key Personnel 2 Project Summary 3 Method: Experimental Design & Operative process of contact 4 Communication to wikipedians 5 Dissemination 6 Wikimedia Policies, Ethics, and Human Subjects Protection 7 Benefits for the Wikimedia community 8 Expected Duration 9 References 10 Questions to the Wikimedia Research Committe

Research project
Cognitive styles and other motivations for participating in Wikipedia
main Edgar Snchez contact (mailto:sanchezedgar@yahooinc.com)
Yahoo! Research Barcelona

start 2011-November end 2012-January status planned fields Cognitive Science o p en access W MF S R support
Wikimedia research projects

Key Personnel

Edgar Snchez, PhD (mailto://sanchezedgar@yahoo-inc.com)

Project Summary
Group formation has been studying for many years from different disciplines, traditions, and schools of thought. To mention few of them: in Sociology with social networking analysis (Galaskiewicz, 1993, Scott, 1988), in economics with incentives approach (Kollock, 1999 & Raban, Ravid & Rafaelli, 2005)

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and studying opportunity costs, career concerns, and ego gratification (Lerner & Tirole, 2002, 2005), in social psychology studying group dynamics (Ling et. al., 2005) and from Uses and gratifications perspectives (Sangwan, 2005) This study is in Social Network Sites (SNS), particularly Wikipedia and sister projects. The approach is from cognitive psychology focused in individual factors, that is, intrinsic needs and motivations based in the following rationale:

First, contributions and participation on the SNS generally are not directly remunerated; compensations are rarely monetary or tangible benefits. Second, straightforward altruism is a rare phenomenon (Kollock, 1999). And third, there is no public recognition outside Wikipedias boundaries as they are with the credit files in Open-software communities (Voss, 2005 & Arazy et. al. 2006, both cited by Schroer et. al. 2009). Thus motivators and incentives to participate in the SNS are mainly psychological and sociological factors.

Social Network sites are very recent phenomena. Just to mention few, Youtube started to work in 2005, Twitter in 2006, Facebook in 2004 and, the oldest, Wikipedia was launched in 2001. So this is phenomena is no more than 10 years old. In the last 2 or 3 years plenty of research has been doing. Many of those researches are taking people of different SNSs sites as a homogeneous group, fact that probably is because of its novelty (e.g. Gangadharbatla, 2008 and Schroer & Hertel, 2009). It is clear that new phenomenon must be studied firstly in general terms. After researcher have found some general results, in this moment it is possible to start to research in a fine-grained way in order to study these phenomena deeper. Since Wikipedia is a multilingual platform, it is an excellent place to do this fine-grain research. The aim of this research is to study some of the psychological factors that motivate wikipedians to participate few or much in three different groups that correspond to 3 languages: English, Spanish and French. It is based in three well known self-report questionnaires: a) Need for Cognition, b) Need to Belong, and c) Collective Self-esteem. All of them are measures at the individual level. To our best knowledge these three instruments have not been used in studies with Wikipedia

Need for Cognition

In cyberspace-related studies Joyce and Kraut (2006) researching the participation in newsgroups, suggest that some users are self-motivated to write more. As well Ciffolilli (2003, cited by Rafaeli & Ariel, 2008) studying the case of Wikipedia, claims that one of the personal motivations is the intrinsic drive to acquire knowledge.

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Need for Cogntion (NFC, Cacioppo & Petty, 1982), it is an 18-item questionnaire that measures engagement and enjoyment towards intellectual experiences as acquiring and searching for knowledge; two important wikipedians activities, and maybe benefits for them. Two examples of the items in the questionnaire are: "The notion of thinking abstractly is appealing to me," and "Thinking is not my idea of fun". The participants respond in a 9-point Likert scale ranging from 4 (very strong agreement) to -4 (very strong disagreement). High scores in NFC show high motivation regarding pursue, engage and enjoy information retrieval and thinking processes (For details please see Annex I). NFC scale has been used extensively in different contexts as in its relation with effective information processors (Sadowski & Gulgoz, 1996), how it influences in jurors legal decisions (Bornstein, 2004), and how it is related to self-reported satisfaction with their lives as a whole (Coutinho & Woolery, 2004). It was found that there are no gender differences and NFC is not influenced by the pretention to project a favorable image of themselves (Cacioppo & Petty, 1982). In terms to the relations with personality traits, it was also found by Sadowski & Cogburn, (1997) and Verplanken, Hazenberg, & Palenewen, (1992) a positive relation between NFC and conscientiousness (tendency to engage in effortful thought), as well as with openness (curiosity and tolerance to new experiences). To our best knowledge NFC has not been extensively used in online contexts, specifically it has not been used Wikipedia studies. One exception is Gangadharbatla (2008) who found that NFC questionnaire is not related with use of FaceBook (using only seven items of the entire questionnaire). However taking into account that FaceBook is mainly used for social convicence, it might not surprise the results. Research Question 1: Is the information-seeking behavior part of the psychological benefits and gratifications that motivate people to participate in Wikipedia? Taking into account that Wikipedia is a different type of SNSs than FB, it is hypothesized that NFC will be positively related with Wikipedia-editors scores.

Need to Belong

Ciffolilli (2003) suggests that two motivations for the participation, among many others, are the need for belonging and the need to support a specific community. In the same way Lampe et. al. (2010) searching on Everything2.com and based on the Uses and Gratification framework, suggests that belonging feelings to a SNS are important. Wikipedia it is an internet platform where people can satisfy this needs. Need to belong is a scale to measure peoples necessity to be loved and socially accepted (Leary, 1957, Baumeister and Leary 1995; Leary, Kelly, and Schreindorfer 2001). It is a "fundamental human motivation that is something all human beings possess... to form and maintain at least a minimum quantity of lasting, positive, and significant interpersonal relationships" (Baumeister and Leary 1995). It is a 10-item Likert scale with items such as, "I want other people to accept me", "I do not like being alone," and "I try hard to stay in touch with my friends" (Leary 1957; Leary, Kelly, and Schreindorfer 2001). (For details please see Annex II).

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Research Question 2: Is need to belong an important motive to participate in wikipedia? It is hypothesized that it is positively related with wikipedians.

Collective Self-esteem

Collective self-esteem (CSE), it is defined by Tajfel (1981) as the "aspect of the individuals' self-concept which derives from their knowledge of their membership in a social group together with the value and emotional significance attached to that membership". Thus CSE refers to the value placed on the group to which the person belongs, which actually can be a psychological motive to attach to a group. Luhtanen and Crocker (1992) propose a Collective Self-esteem scale to measure individual levels of social identity based on group membership (i.e. perceptions and feelings related to social group memberships). The goal is to predict the more active or more involved members. It is formed by 16 items answered on 7-point scale (1-Strongly disagree to 7- Strongly Agree), divided in four subscales corresponding to the four types or dimensions of collective self-esteem: a) membership self-esteem - Self-evaluations about the their ones importance as a group member b) private collective self-esteem Self-evaluation and personal believes of how good the group is c) public collective self-esteem - Evaluation of other peoples evaluation of the group. d) importance to identity Evaluation of how much important the membership to the group is in terms of ones self-concept (how central the group is to the individuals self-concept). The scale has been used to measure a wide array of group variables such as gender, race or sexual orientation. To our best knowledge, this scale has not been used extensively in online communities. The exception is Gangadharbatla (2008) who found positive relation with FB use. To our best knowledge, this has not been used in other SNSs as Wikipedia or Twitter Research Question 3: Is the collective self-esteem a relevant motivational variable to participate in wikipedia? It is hypothesized that higher scores on the CSES scale are positively related with active members of the SNS

Method: Experimental Design & Operative process of contact

Experiment to be done with wikipedians (Wikipedia Editors) from one of the three main languages used on the internet: English, Spanish and French (http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats7.htm) working with participants in 3 Wikipedia chapters where the mentioned languages are a mother tongue: U.S.A., Spain and France. The invitation will be sent through Wikipedia email to two stratified samples of each Wikipedia chapter. One from the top decile (top 10% of active users) and the other from the 9th decile (the second from last decile, less active users). The goal is to have two different levels to compare the differences, excluding the least active users, in

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order to avoid biases with people in not completely yet involved in Wikipedia activities. For each of the 120 wikipedians will be randomly selected, expecting 25 to 30% of response rate. That is, around 30 participants per group, the minimum necessary to conduct hypothesis testing. Three web pages will be available corresponding to each Wikipedia Chapters (or languages) Important considerations No email will be send to people who explicitly mention not to be sent emails. The email will be personalized using the user as being the name of the participant. To keep disturbance to the minimum, no follow up messages will be send. Anonimation of the data is guaranteed.

Communication to wikipedians
Email Title: Kind invitation to participate in a survey in neuroscience. Hello, my name is Edgar Snchez neuroscientist currently at Yahoo! Research Barcelona. I am sending you this message to kindly invite you to participate in an online survey about those peoples characteristics that wikipedians share. The survey is reviewed and approved by the Wikipedia Foundation Research Committee and it is being conducted in three languages parallelly: English, Spanish & French. I am contacting you because you were randomly selected from a list of active wikipedians. The survey will take only between 7 and 10 minutes, it is very straightforward. Wikipedia is an open project by nature. Lets make open our motivations!

Please go to the following link www.[to be defined]. Best Regards Edgar Snchez sanchezedgar@yahoo-inc.com

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Dissemination
It is pretended to publish this research results in a Peer-Review Journal and/or in a Congress.

Wikimedia Policies, Ethics, and Human Subjects Protection

This research will be conducted under American Psychological Association Ethics & Conduct Code

Benefits for the Wikimedia community

This project will help to understand individual motivations of Wikipedians

Expected Duration
Presentation to Wikimedia Research Committee - November 2nd, 2011 Data Collection - November 15th to December 15th, 2011 Data Analysis - December 15th, 2011 to January 10th 2012 Final Report - January 20th, 2012

References
Arazy, O., Ji, Y., & Patterson, R. A. (2006). Does reputation matter for Open Content Systems? Paper presented at the 1st Design Science Research in Information Systems and Technology conference (DESRIST 2006), Claremont, CA. Baumeister, R. F. and M.R. Leary (1995), "The Need to Belong: Desire for Interpersonal Attachments as a Fundamental Human Motivation," Psychological Bulletin, 117, 497-529. Bornstein, B. H. (2004). The impact of different types of expert scientific testimony on mock jurors liability verdicts. Psychology, Crime & Law, 10, 429446. Cacioppo, J. T. & Petty, R. E. (1982). The Need for Cognition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 42, 116-131.

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Cacioppo, J.T., R.E. Perry and C.E. Kao (1984), The Efficient Assessment of Need for Cognition, Journal of Personality Assessment, 48, 306-307. Cacioppo, J. T., & Petty, R. E. (1984). The need for cognition: Relationships to attitudinal processes. In R. P. McGlynn, J. E. Maddux, C. Stoltenberg, & J. H. Harvey (Eds.), Social perception in clinical and counseling psychology. Lubbock, Texas Tech University Press. Cacioppo, J. T., Petty, R. E., Feinstein, J, A., & Jarvis, W. B. G. (1996). Dispositional differences in cognitive motivation: The life and times of individuals varying in need for cognition. Psychological Bulletin, 119, 197253. Ciffolilli, A. (2003). Phantom authority, self-selective recruitment and retention of members in virtual communities: The case of Wikipedia. First Monday, 8(12). Retrieved on October 25, 2007, from http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue8_12/ciffolilli/index.html. Coutinho, S. A., Woolery, L. M. (2004). The need for cognition and life satisfaction among college students. College Student Journal, 38, 203206. Deci, E. (1975). Intrinsic motivation. New York: Plenum Press. Deci, E., & Ryan, R. (1985). Intrinsic motivation and self-determination in human behavior. New York: Plenum Press. Ellison, N. B., Steinfield, C., & Lampe, C. (2007). The benefits of facebook "friends:" social capital and college students' use of online social network sites. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 12 (4), 1143-1168 Gangadharbatla, H. (2008). Facebook me: Collective self-esteem, need to belong, and internet selfefficacy as predictors of the iGeneration's attitudes toward social networking sites. Journal of Interactive Advertising, 8 (2), 5-15. Galaskiewicz J. (1993) Social Network Analysis Concepts, Methodology, and Directions for the 1990s. Sociological Methods Research Vol. 22 no. 1 3-22. Hars, A., & Ou, S. (2001, January). Working for free? Motivations of participating in open source projects. Proceedings of the 34th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS34). Vol. 7, p. 7014. Joyce, E., & Kraut, R. E. (2006). Predicting continued participation in newsgroups. Journal of Computer -Mediated Communication, 11, 723747 Kollock, P. (1999). The economies of online cooperation: Gifts and public goods in cyberspace. In M. Smith & P. Kollock (Eds.), Communities in cyberspace. London: Routledge. LaRose, R., Lai, Y.-J., Lange, R., Love, B., & Wu, Y. (2005). Sharing or piracy? An exploration of downloading behavior. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 11(1), http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol11/issue1/larose.html

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Lampe, C., Wash, R., Velasquez, A., & Ozkaya, E. (2010 - to be presented) Motivations to Participate in Online Communities. In the Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) (Atlanta, GA 2010). Leary, T. (1957), Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality. New York: Ronald Press Co. Leary, M.R., K.M. Kelly, and L.S. Schreindorfer (2001), "Individual Differences in the Need to Belong," unpublished manuscript, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, NC. Lerner, J., & Tirole, J. (2002). Some simple economics of open source. Journal of Industrial Economics, 50 , 197-234. Lerner, J., & Tirole, J. (2005). Economic perspectives on Open Source. In J. Feller, B. Fitzgerald, S. A. Hissam & K. R. Lakhani (Eds.), Perspectives on Free and Open Source Software (pp. 47-78). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press Ling, K., Beenen, G., Ludford, P., Wang, X., Chang, K., Li, X., Cosley, D., Frankowski, D., Terveen, L., Rashid, A. M., Resnick, P., and Kraut, R. (2005). Using social psychology to motivate contributions to online communities. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 10(4), article 10. Luhtanen, R. and J. Crocker (1992), "A Collective Self-Esteem Scale: Self-Evaluation of One's Social Identity," Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 18, 302-318. Poblete, B., Garcia R., Mendoza M. y Jaimes, A. (2011) Do All Birds Tweet the Same? Characterizing Twitter Around the World. Working Paper. http://www.ruthygarcia.com/papers/cikm2011.pdf Raban, Ravid & Rafaelli (2005) Social and Economic Incentives in Google Answers. Working paper. Rafaeli, S., & Ariel, Y. (2008). Online motivational factors: Incentives for participation and contribution in Wikipedia. In A. Barak (Ed.), Psychological aspects of cyberspace: Theory, research, applications (pp. 243-267). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press Ross, C., Orr, E. S., Sisic, M., Arseneault, J. M., Simmering, M. G., & Orr, R. R. (2009). Personality and motivations associated with facebook use. Computers in Human Behavior, 25(2), 578-586 [Computer Mediated Communication (CMC)] Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-determination theory and the facilitation of intrinsic motivation, social development, and well-being. American Psychologist, 55, 6878. Sadowski, C. J., & Cogburn, H. E. (1997). Need for cognition in the big-five factor structure. The Journal of Psychology, 131, 307312 Sadowski, C., & Gulgoz, S. (1996). Elaborative processing mediates the relationship between the need for cognition and academic performance. Journal of Psychology, 30, 303-308. Sangwan, S. (2005, January). Virtual community success: A users and gratifications perspective. Proceedings of the 38th HICSS Conference, Honolulu, Hawaii. Scott J (1988) Social Network Analysis. Sociology vol. 22 no. 1 109-127.

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Scott J (2000) Social Network Analysis: A Handbook (2nd Ed) London: Sage. Voss, J. (2005). Measuring Wikipedia. Paper presented at the 10th International Conference of the International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics, Stockholm, Sweden. Retrieved October 23, 2006, from http://eprints.rclis.org/archive/00003610

Questions to the Wikimedia Research Committe

You the committee have good experience in research issues, so I would like to ask the following questions Do you think it is worth to present the questionnaires in English to non-english speaking countries? For instance Germany or Croatia? Which is the day you consider better to start? Monday? Friday/weekend? Any other day? (The idea behind this question is the following. If we offer the opportunity to participate during those day wikipedians are more active, the probability to get the response grows.) Because of the same fact (the good experience you all have) any kind of questions and / or feedback would be very welcome. Retrieved from "http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php? title=Research:Cognitive_styles_and_other_motivations_for_participating_in_Wikipedia&oldid=3044789" Categories: 2011 projects Open access projects WMF-supported projects Subject recruitment support Pending WMF support requests This page was last modified on 4 November 2011, at 22:17 (UTC). Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License; additional terms may apply. See Terms of use for details.

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