A User Study in a Pandemic: Some Lessons Learned
Kristine M. Rogers, Emily Trubey, Douglas W. Oard · Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology · 2022
ABSTRACT During the COVID‐19 pandemic, some research that otherwise would have been conducted in person pivoted to online platforms. This poster paper describes lessons learned from an online study of information behavior by individuals with long‐term information needs, focusing on what was learned about how to conduct such a study online. Broadly, three themes are evident: (1) Trust mechanisms were weaker than would be expected for an in‐person study, resulting in greater coordination difficulties; (2) What seemed to be a fair reimbursement rate appears to have provided an outsized incentive for fraud; and (3) Zoom proved to be sufficiently capable as a platform for remote use of software for a study that had not originally been designed with remote use in mind.