Melissa Kline Struhl

@melissaekline@mefi.social
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Executive Director of lookit.mit.edu, strong feelings about data management & collaborative science. My last name is "Kline Struhl" (she/her)

itsatextfile on metafilter

Websitewww.melissaklinestruhl.com
(This job could also be an excellent opportunity for someone to dip a toe into non-tenure-track roles in research infrastructure. I love this work and would be happy to tell you all about why!)
Please feel free to ask me any questions about Children Helping Science, Psych-DS, or this role either on here or at mekline@mit.edu. We are looking to hire a candidate quickly, so please get in touch if you might be interested!
Because this is a temp (<1 year) position & the processes at MIT work a little differently, I'm not yet able to share an exact salary range. You can expect this to be comparable to MIT lab manager salaries for a post-bacc version of the position, or a postdoc salary for a PhD version.
This is an interim position covering a parental leave (mine!) designed to provide continuity for these two growing projects, along with a chance to work with a truly lovely team of software engineers and scientists, and TWO engaged and welcoming online research communities

Popping back over here to announce that Children Helping Science and Psych-DS are hiring for a joint, temporary position!

Job ad: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CIOeuVB8-p1BA8DPwv_qtCpirsnfs_Eyb7R4eEHaf2U/edit
Other comments: read on

Open Source Community Specialist (Interim)

Open Source Community Specialist (Interim) We are hiring for a short-term position with Children Helping Science (CHS) and Psych-DS, two open source projects hosted at MIT. This is an interim position, covering a parental leave absence with hand-off periods on either side. The Community Special...

Google Docs
@hye @briannosek I think there’s something to framing the role and process as approach (v. avoidance) oriented for the researchers whose work is being checked/audited — the potential for a positive outcome (e.g., a “gold certification”) as opposed to relief. In general, it seems to me positive reproducibility and audit outcomes aren’t celebrated/recognized enough

Here are our current consent templates:

Explanation of how we do consent, parametrization options: https://lookit.readthedocs.io/projects/frameplayer/en/latest/components/exp-lookit-video-consent/doc.html

(These are set to be fully configurable because there is no section that some IRB does not want to potentially modify...as they should be able to do, under the current model, but hence the problem)

Actual text here: https://github.com/lookit/research-resources/tree/master/Legal

exp-lookit-video-consent — Experiment runner documentation

With an actually standardized consent process, not only can families get used to seeing & agreeing (or not) to the same terms, as a platform we can provide education to families that will enable them to better understand their choices and what it means to participate in research!

So on to my question: Have you seen something like this work before? What would keep you/your IRB from being able to work with a solution like this? What kinds of provisions would make you feel comfortable approving something like this for researchers at your institution?

And finally, where can I learn about this other than social media? What kinds of groups/forums/conferences might be good places to learn more about this?

One example of what I'm thinking about is this excellent project - open-brain-consent.readthedocs.io Unlike this project, I am not handling health/biometric data, I *am* handling data from minors, and like this project I am very invested in ethical solutions for open data sharing

DO YOU WORK ON AN IRB OR OTHER ETHICS APPROVAL BOARD! I want to talk to you!!

(1) I run a website (childrenhelpingscience.com) where over 100 research labs provide studies that children and families can participate in from home

(2) Participants consent individually to each study

(3) We provide template consent forms that researchers can use, as well as automatic tools for implementing other best practices for informed consent

(4) Most IRBs asks for *some* changes to the consent form, especially around how data will be used after collection

(5) This creates a bad situation for families that lowers their ability to consent with full information - every single form is slightly different and the differences that really matter are hard to spot.

(6) As an infrastructure provider, I'd like to solve this!

I'm bummed to be remote, but excited to be putting final touches on prep for the Psych-DS hackathon at #SIPS2023 !!

Come on over to help standardize our datasets to make it easier to understand one another and connect to your favorite tools (even if your data is confidential) (DM me for joining details)