Purpose of this study
As part of a PhD, a study is being carried out to evaluate whether crowdsourcing can enhance the design of an ontology. Crowdsourcing is a process that delegates a task to a crowd of individuals to solve a problem. An ontology is a data structure that represents information used in a particular discipline (note that a discipline is sometimes referred to as a domain). In this study your feedback is being sought to help develop an ontology that represents information about patients who have Diabetes and Obesity. This ontology will be used in a later study.
The later study will investigate the effectiveness of personalised patient education. A web based application will be developed that will use the information captured in the ontology to provide education that is tailored to the characteristics of each individual patient. The study will evaluate whether personalised education is more effective (i.e. more useful, relevant, understandable and engaging) for the patient when compared to the traditional patient education approach (e.g. general pamphlet). Personalised educational material may include information that addresses the symptoms, health concerns and treatments that are specific to each patient. Focusing on information that is relevant to the patient may reduce a feeling of being overwhelmed or confused by a volume of unfamiliar terms and images. The content may also include text and images that are personalised to the age group and gender of the patient, thereby rendering the education more familiar and accessible.
As part of the crowdsourcing process, we kindly invite you to complete the following survey. The survey has three sections. The first section is a screen cast which provides an explanation of what an ontology is. The second section will ask you to enter some information about yourself. The third section contains the survey questions. The questions will ask you to complete tasks such as adding information to an ontology and organising the information captured in an ontology. This will take approximately 15-20 minutes to complete.
Your participation
Participation is voluntary and you can choose not to participate or can leave the survey at any stage. If you choose to participate your information will be anonymised and held securely, and used only for the purposes of this study. You are free to withdraw from the study at any point, without explanation, and your information will be removed from the study.
If you have any questions about the study or need additional information please feel free to contact us.
Dr Raymond Bond
School of Computing and Mathematics
University of Ulster
Shore Road, Newtownabbey, Co. Antrim
BT37 0QB
Phone: +44 28 90368156
Email: rb.bond@ulster.ac.uk