Posted by Shar on April 15, 2000, at 14:33:18
Dr. Bob,
This is in response to your post about possibly charging for access to Babble. Can I assist you in taking an alternate approach? There may be other Babblers who also would help--what a team, eh??
If you need money, I am pretty good with research, and grant/research funding applications (bureaucrat for almost 20 years, and Ph.D.). I would be happy to volunteer to help you find and apply for funding.
About doing a survey--I have seen some sites where people can complete a survey as an option; but, I agree that the reliability of the results would be questionable.
You have access to all the posts. I believe they are intrinsically valuable and contain a wealth of information. Have you thought about having an intern doing some content analysis or something along those lines?
In some cases you could even track outcome information, as in someone whose first post is dire hopelessness, but over time they are doing better, and ultimately they are contributing posts of their own.
Could you set up a doctoral candidate to do a dissertaion to develop a really sound profile of the issues and people who use/post/need Babble, the efficacy of the outcomes that can be tracked, what doctors could learn about prescribing meds based on the questions and comments here on Babble, etc.?
There are so many new statistical techniques available that could be used (qualitative and quantitative). Perhaps even a meta-analysis, given the archive information you have?
Please, let's Babblers and you talk about this before you impose restrictions.
Shar
poster:Shar
thread:30123
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20000411/msgs/30123.html