Logo courtesy of ICTD 2012, Georgia Tech

Many of the Global Impact Study research partners will be attending the upcoming ICTD 2012 conference in Atlanta, Georgia March 12-15, 2012. In addition to TASCHA researchers, representatives from our survey implementation teams in Bangladesh, Brazil, Chile, Ghana, and the Philippines will attend, as will some of the principal investigators of our in-depth studies. Components of the Global Impact Study will be highlighted in two open sessions and one presentation. We hope that any of you attending ICTD 2012 will consider participating in one or more of the sessions and presentation.

Open session: Want open research? Deep dive into data with the Global Impact Study

Technology and Social Change Group, University of Washington Information School

This session will bring together individuals interested in survey data analysis, for an intensive day of exploring user survey data from the Global Impact Study. As a core component of the project we carried out surveys of public access ICT venue operators, users, and non-users in five countries – Bangladesh, Brazil, Chile, Ghana, and the Philippines. The data with accompanying meta-documentation will be made publicly available upon completion of the project.

Session participants will have the opportunity to review and work with the user survey dataset representing approximately 5,000 users. The data cover a wide range of topics including user demographics, usage patterns, and perceived impacts. Opportunities abound for participants to pursue diverse lines of interest.

This session will be facilitated by the project’s management team with support from staff of the University of Washington’s Center for Statistical Consulting.

Open session: Distant fields, common findings? Identifying the challenges and benefits of multi-country qualitative research

Jenna Burrell, UC Berkeley; Janet Kwami, Furman University; Elisa Oreglia, UC Berkeley; Ricardo Ramirez, Independent, Canada; Andy Gordon, University of Washington; Balaji Parthasarathy, IIITB – Bangalore, India

The goal of this workshop is to discuss experiences in multi-country ethnographic/qualitative field work, an area that has been mostly the domain of quantitative studies. We build on the two separate multi-country projects carried out by the organizers, in order to identify what are the advantages and the risks of such research, how to coordinate research questions and hypothesis-making with the need to keep open to discoveries, and what role can this type of research play in the field of ICTD.

The first project is a 3-country (Ghana, Uganda, and China) study employing an ethnographic research to look at the adoption and use of ICT among ‘marginalized populations,’ focusing on market women in Ghana, farmers in rural China, and slum dwellers in Uganda, and comparing their practices and the information processes that exist around their businesses.  The second project combined several qualitative data collection tools, including ethnographies, with country-wide surveys to study ‘infomediaries’ (persons who combine a set of technological resources and coaching to meet users’ information needs and communication capabilities) in Lithuania, Chile, and Bangladesh. It focused on libraries, telecenters, and cybercafés to investigate and generate evidence on the scale, character, and impact of public access to ICT. Part of a larger project entitled Global Impact Study of Public Access to Information & Communication Technology, it investigates the impact of ICT in a number of areas, including communication and leisure, culture and language, education, employment and income, governance, and health.

Presentation: Sharing in public: Working with others in Ghanaian cybercafés

Michael Best, Bence Kollanyi, Sunil Garg, all of Georgia Tech

This paper explores the different ways in which people collaborate and share knowledge in public internet venues, or cybercafés, in Ghana, West Africa. Based on 150 survey interviews conducted in two different cybercafés, one urban and business-oriented and the other peri-urban and family-oriented, the authors find that most cybercafé customers, largely regardless of their demographic, would like to engage in collaborative work in public internet venues and that a large percentage already are. This paper is based on the Collaborative Knowledge Sharing in-depth study of the Global Impact Study.

Contrary to the belief of resource constraints driving shared use, those participants who reported already working together in the cybercafés generally did not cite economic motivations for their collaboration but instead identified enhanced productivity as the main reason. These collaborating respondents also reported performing more instrumental activities in the café and were more likely to have learned critical computing skills there when compared to those who were not already collaborating. Furthermore, they report being more social in their activities at the venue. Finally, the paper notes that collaboration and peer learning is not always planned or made public; voyeuristic forms of knowledge sharing, such as when someone glances at a stranger’s computer screen, are also cited by the survey participants as a learning opportunity in these public venues.

For more information about ICTD 2012, please visit http://ictd2012.org/.

In total, fellows from six teams have authored eight papers through research projects that began earlier this year. The teams are supported through grants coming from the Amy Mahan Research Fellowship Program. Along with the Global Impact Study, this program is part of the project, Investigating the Social and Economic Impact of Public Access to ICT and puts a particular emphasis on building the capacity of emerging researchers in developing countries.

The research themes are diverse, but all look at the way by which public access to ICT, through venues such as telecentres, Internet cafés or libraries, can potentially affect the lives of people in developing countries. Wei Shang and Lei Guoxin will present their work that includes the topic of whether or not Internet addiction or rising juvenile delinquency associated with Internet café users is really happening in China. Jean Damascène of Rwanda will be showcasing his team’s work on the likelihood of job seekers finding employment after they have acquired ICT skills through training in telecentres. Other fellows will also be presenting their work throughout the day at the conference. Their papers can be found on the fellowship website.

Investigating the Social and Economic Impact of Public Access to ICT is a five-year, CAD$7.9 million research project supported by Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC), and a grant to IDRC from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.  Managed by IDRC, it is executed through two sub-projects: the Global Impact Study, and the Amy Mahan Research Fellowship Program.  The Global Impact Study, led by the Technology & Social Change Group at the University of Washington, funds a series of rigorous studies that aims to generate concrete evidence on the impact of public access to ICT.  The Amy Mahan Research Fellowship Program, led by Universitat Pompeu Fabra, deepens the capacity of emerging scholars with the goal of increasing the amount of quality research in the area of public access to ICT from developing countries.

Given the strong connection between the theme of the 2010 International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) conference — open access to knowledge — and the Global Impact Study’s open research approach, we were pleased to present a poster about our inventory database and web application.

The poster — Open data and open tools: The Global Impact Study inventory and web application — authored by Chris Rothschild, Araba Sey, and Alexander Tulinsky, was presented by Chris Coward. The poster highlights the data users can view through the web application, such as location, ownership, internet access fees, and types of public access venues in Bangladesh, Brazil, Chile, Lithuania, and the Philippines. The poster also explores several delicate issues surrounding open research and open data, including privacy concerns, ethical issues, data validity, and conditions of use.

While this tool is primarily intended for researchers, many practitioners at IFLA thought it would be useful for them as well: “I wish this data and database existed for all countries!” But Chris Coward cautioned that the Global Impact Study did not set out to create a comprehensive database, nor should it be used as such. Rather, it is our hope that this tool, in the spirit of open research, will be beneficial and useful to researchers and practitioners alike.

For more information about the inventory database and web application you can download a PDF of the poster.

For more information about the inventory research activity, browse inventory updates.

To register for access and use the application, visit the site at http://database.globalimpactstudy.org/.

The presentation was held in conjunction with the launch of a new CIS paper: Libraries, telecentres and cybercafés: a study of public access venues around the world.

• Inform the International Advisory Committee of the progress of the project, particularly on the status of the research design effort
• Obtain advice and input on the research design development strategy
• Gather input on the emerging trends and issues related to public access to ICT and/or impact assessment methodology
• Gather input on the potential stakeholders’ interest in the project and strategy for outreach and communications to these stakeholders, and
• Clarify the Committee’s operational mandate and internal working mechanisms.

Based on discussions that emerged during the workshop, the International Advisory Committee provided the following recommendations:

• Consider three tiers of “success” for the project itself: data, analysis, and policy impact
• Collect as much data in a uniform way across as many sites as possible (both quantitative and qualitative data)
• Make all of the data, as well as the data-collection methodology, available to the general public
• Restrict attention to centers that provide public access to general-purpose computing devices and/or the Internet
• Brand the project
• Establish the core research working group as mentor figures to the country teams

Download PDF of the complete meeting minutes and more detail on the recommendations.

Download PDF of Francisco Proenza’s commentary on plans for the first phase of the Global Impact Study (dated May 13, 2008). Francisco is a member of the 5nternational Advisory Committee.