Hi Asaf -- Thanks for sharing this. It's a good article and there's a lot to agree with. Certainly there's a clear need for both qualitative and quantitive research and figuring out how to combine them is a worthwhile challenge. A lot of modern productive development practices stress empathy, meeting users where they are along with big data and we're certainly aspiring to this level of work in the Reading team. Where I think the Foundation and the Movement struggle is on the evaluation side and I don't think the article addresses this issue particularly well. Measuring the impact of non-profit work has always been challenging and will continue to be so. It's certainly true that the emphasis on big data has been less helpful here. Finally, since I can't resist, Nokia failed because they didn't do ethnographic research on their existing users in Europe and North America, not potential users across the planet and missed the fact that people would be thrilled to trade in their candy-bar phones for fancy iphones and androids! -Toby On Wed, Jan 27, 2016 at 5:34 AM, Marcel Ruiz Forns <mforns(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: _______________________________________________ Analytics mailing list Analytics(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/analytics

I should add that the research-and-data team is also on board with this approach. Honestly, I think it's a little silly that we make the distinction between methodological expertise when we split the team up.

But "thick data", come on. We can get a better term than that? How about "meaningful measurements"? Or we could just call it "competent application of methods".

-Aaron On Wed, Jan 27, 2016 at 11:43 AM, Jonathan Morgan <jmorgan(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: _______________________________________________ Analytics mailing list Analytics(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/analytics

Hi Asaf and Raul, The shorter version: My background tells me that ethnographers bring a new perspective and depth to many quantitative research endeavours. I am fully on board that for some projects you cannot rely on quantitative analysis alone. The longer version: As a researcher in the Foundation, I can share with you some of my thoughts on the subject of what is called "thick data" in the article. * In the context of the article, thick data refers to ethnographic studies, not necessarily other qualitative approaches for understanding deeper. It's important to distinguish the two since although the Research team does qualitative and quantitative research, none of that research that I'm aware of at the moment involves ethnographic research. * Most of the people in the Research team that I have talked to value ethnographic research. * Combining ethnographic and big data approaches is not a solved problem, many acknowledge that it's an important one, but it's not solved. Quite a few top tier academic institutions have acknowledged and are working on it. The so called Social Computing programs are the children of this acknowledgement. :-) I got my PhD in a department called management science and engineering. The department was created by combining three programs: Operations Research (think applied math and more recently big data work), Organizational Behavior (ethnographic studies and more), System Economics (or Economics of Systems I believe). I experienced first-hand the challenges and opportunities of increasing research interactions among these traditionally separate programs/departments. We are making progress on this front, we are not there yet, neither in academia nor in research institutions and industry. * As Aaron and Jonathan have mentioned, the Research team values qualitative and quantitative research. The most recent example of it may be the research <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Characterizing_Wikipedia_Reader_Behaviour> we have started to understand Wikipedia readers in fall 2015. That research has not involved ethnographic research, however, it definitely has involved and will continue to involve a mix of qualitative and quantitative approaches. I hope this helps. And thanks again for starting this conversation. :-) Best, Leila Leila Zia Research Scientist Wikimedia Foundation On Wed, Jan 27, 2016 at 12:34 AM, Asaf Bartov &lt;abartov(a)wikimedia.org&gt; wrote: _______________________________________________ Analytics mailing list Analytics(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/analytics