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/.

Executive Summary

The Global Impact Study Project-Wide Workshop was held June 28-30, 2011 at the Islandwood Campus  in Bainbridge Island, WA. The workshop had three main objectives within the overarching objective of launching the third and final phase of the Global Impact Study: 1) Sharing among the workshop participants about the various research activities and findings to date, 2) Discovering potential lines of analysis emerging from the data , and 3) Committing to project outputs and communication activities for dissemination. Over the three days, workshop participants discussed their research and findings, received feedback on their work, reviewed the user and venue survey data, discussed areas for analysis and integration of the data from both the surveys and in-depth studies, and considered how the Global Impact Study, both collectively and by individual research partners, can best aggregate and disseminate the findings from this study in final outputs.

The first day of the workshop focused on updates from the in-depth studies. The second day offered an opportunity for participants to learn about the emerging findings and initial analysis of the user and venue survey data. Research implementation teams also gave an overview of country-specific public access landscapes, and all participants were able to delve deeper into the survey data and begin discussions on data integration. As the second day ended, participants began to talk about potential project outputs and dissemination activities, such as an academic book and panels at ICTD 2012. After a presentation on the data integration framework, the third day was composed of smaller working groups: the research implementation teams on country-specific outputs, the PIs on their final report structure and the potential for an academic book, and the survey data analysis working group on survey data cleaning and further analysis. Following these working sessions were additional working sessions with the survey data analysis working group discussing the survey data with the in-depth study PIs, and participants identifying specific upcoming opportunities, such as conferences, for outputs and dissemination.

Download workshop report.

This workshop is significant in the Global Impact Study timeline, as it launched the next phase of our study – data analysis and integration. The majority of the workshop was devoted to sharing and discussing the emerging findings from each of the research activities. This revealed patterns and insights that will inform the integrated analysis effort over the coming year, culminating in the study’s final report, journal articles, policy briefs, practitioner tools and other outputs. Along the way we will be disseminating early reports, beginning with three working papers later this summer summarizing top-line results from the surveys.

We also began to identify opportunities, such as conferences and stakeholder convenings, to engage with communities that will be interested in the study’s findings.  We will announce these venues as they are confirmed.

A full workshop report will be released later this month.

Survey data analysis workshop; photo courtesy of Melody Clark

In our workshop on data integration, we developed a data integration framework, demonstrating how we will tie together the data and findings from all of our research activities. The framework will provide an analytical lens for interpreting our data and conceptualizing the impacts of public access ICTs. We also identified the main objectives for a project-wide data integration workshop which we will hold at the end of June 2011. The June workshop will bring together our research partners to share findings from their in-depth studies and local country contexts, review data from all components of the project research, and identify streams of analysis and themes for our research reports.

We would like to thank Francois Bar, Mike Crandall, Hil Lyons and Yuan Chiam from the Center for Statistical Consulting, and George Sciadas, as well as Andy Gordon and Beth Kolko for their invaluable insights and participation during last week’s workshops. Thanks also to all our research partners for your updates and reports, which were valuable inputs for the workshops.

In March 2010 Global Impact Study team members working on the in-depth studies, survey, and inventory activities gathered to harmonize impact indicators and discuss the project’s approach to communications knowledge sharing. We outlined our proposed approach to communications and knowledge sharing and in the discussion that followed researchers expressed the need for an internal communication space where Global Impact Study members can ask questions, request feedback, and share resources, reports, and any other materials that are not ready or intended for public consumption. TASCHA has established a Dgroup for this purpose.

For more information you can download the communications and knowledge-sharing presentation, or view photos from the workshop.

The primary output of the workshop was a shortlist of areas for in-depth studies to undertake at the beginning of phase two of the project. Workshop participants formed groups and drafted proposals for the studies. The groups are currently finalizing their proposals, with the first in-depth studies planned for early 2009.

Browse all in-depth study updates »

Tentative plans include having a one-day meeting for the Research Working Group, followed by a two-day meeting for the Research Working Group and the Country Research Teams. There may also be an optional fourth day held as a working session.

• Review the country teams’ sample data submissions and comments on the inventory, information mapping, and research designs. The Research Working Group will then outline an updated plan for pre-testing to be done during August and September 2008.
• Articulate ideas of Research Working Group members about possible research designs.

Planning for the meeting is still underway.

The workshop began with presentations about the public access environments in each of the pilot countries. This included:

• Landscape analysis — What are the major types of public access points (libraries, cybercafes, telecentres)? What is the scale? Who funds them? What are their missions? Who goes to them? What are some of the major activities that people do in these centers? Are there other distinguishing characteristics?
• Story gathering & visual representation — What does public access look like? How do people describe the best possible outcome case of people using the center? The average/typical case? The worst case?
• Data availability — What data exists about public access in the country? Types and number of venues, user numbers and demographics, and any other data that can be collected.

Following this, members of the Research Working Group presented a number of methodological approaches for consideration, including:

• Inventory and taxonomy (George Sciadas)
• Outcome mapping (Ricardo Ramirez)
• Most significant change (Ricardo Ramirez)
• Retrospective study (Mike Best)
• Quasi-experimental designs (Mike Best)

Research design brainstorm

Dividing into three groups with the Country Research Teams, participants developed hypotheses based on the characteristics of each country’s public access environment. Several ideas came out of this process, including the role of infomediaries, the gender of operators, and types of restrictions on computer usage.

The general conclusion? More information is needed to develop research questions that the Country Research Teams can confidently state represents the most important and relevant dimensions of public access to study in their respective countries.

Operationalizing the overarching research questions

Francois Bar, chair of the Research Working Group, presented a reformulation of the overarching research questions in terms that will lead to better operational research designs.

• Is there impact? YES/NO. If so, how much?
• Could we do it better? YES/NO. If so, how much? (relates to differing program design conditions)
• Is there something else we could do to achieve equal impact? YES/NO. If so, how much? (covers the cost/benefit question)

Next steps: parallel activities to develop research designs

Workshop participants underscored the need to undertake a number of parallel activities that will allow the project to develop a set of research designs.

• Research Working Group — Undertake information ecology mappings in a number of communities and conduct other related background research
• Research Working Group — Develop research designs based on own experiences
• Center for Information & Society — Complete a review of the literature to uncover documented impacts, novel methodologies, and knowledge gaps

The Research Working Group will meet during the summer to review preliminary findings and research designs from the Research Working Group. A second global workshop will be scheduled in the fall to finalize the research strategy for phase two of the project.

• A more focused set of research questions
• A plausible overarching framework model that can be used to operationalize the research objectives of the project
• Better understanding of the historical, current and possible future landscape of public access to ICTs in Lithuania, India, Chile, and South Africa
• The importance of including least developed countries as part of the pilot when testing the research methodology
• Suggestions on ways to build a stronger gender perspective into the project design/framework and a better understanding how gender can also affect it
• Clarified the interest and availability of participants on the different research and advisory roles identified for the project (through interviews)
• Broader understanding of issues that need to be considered in the use of possible theories and methodologies for the research (but also affirmed the benefit of combining more than one approach)

Workshop outputs:

• Workshop Final Report, IDRC
• Presentation: Assessing the impact of public internet access in Lithuania, Ugne Rutkauskiene & Kestutis Juskevicius, Bibliotekos pažangai (Libraries for Innovation)
• Presentation: A Research Design Framework on Public Access & ICTs: Exploring the India Context, Anita Gurumurthy, IT for Change