Study on depression

post by Swimmer963 (Miranda Dixon-Luinenburg) (Swimmer963) · 2013-01-15T21:58:18.255Z · LW · GW · Legacy · 15 comments

Contents

15 comments

I am currently running a study on depression, in collaboration with Shannon Friedman (http://lesswrong.com/user/ShannonFriedman/overview/). If you are interested in participating, the study involves filling out a survey and will take a few minutes of your time (half an hour would be very generous), most likely once a week for four weeks. Send me an email at mdixo100@uottawa.ca, and I can give you more details. 

 

Thank you!

15 comments

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comment by ChristianKl · 2013-01-16T00:26:40.347Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Who do you want as participants? Everyone? Only people who think they are depressed? Only people with clinically diagnosed depression?

Replies from: Swimmer963
comment by Shmi (shminux) · 2013-01-15T22:24:26.808Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Presumably this is a proper research study for your degree, not a personal effort?

Replies from: Swimmer963
↑ comment by Swimmer963 (Miranda Dixon-Luinenburg) (Swimmer963) · 2013-01-15T22:53:51.757Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Nope. Personal effort. I'm doing it as a favour to Shannon Friedman, because she was speculating in some comments that it'd be nice to have some data on her ideas, and I thought "cool, I could do that."

Replies from: shminux
↑ comment by Shmi (shminux) · 2013-01-16T00:27:47.144Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Hmm, I would be interested to know what methodology you guys plan to use. Oh, and... this nick at gmail.

comment by FiftyTwo · 2013-01-16T01:28:57.868Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Are you looking for test subjects or researchers? It would help if you gave more detail of what you want from people in the description (unless something in the nature of the experiment makes that unwise).

Replies from: Swimmer963
↑ comment by Swimmer963 (Miranda Dixon-Luinenburg) (Swimmer963) · 2013-01-16T02:59:15.057Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Test subjects. And I didn't want to say more because I don't want to "contaminate" the results. It involves filling out a survey though.

comment by [deleted] · 2013-01-17T13:51:15.496Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

If people announced that they had emailed you in this thread, would that be good or bad? I can see short arguments for both.

Good: Might encourage participation? Bad: Might bias results?

Replies from: Swimmer963
↑ comment by Swimmer963 (Miranda Dixon-Luinenburg) (Swimmer963) · 2013-01-17T13:54:18.964Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Overall, I would say bad. I don't think it would be a huge effect, though.

comment by pleeppleep · 2013-01-15T23:12:04.062Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

This seems interesting. Are you just doing the whole thing through email? Also, voluntary response isn't a great way to get accurate results, but I guess it's all you have to work with.

Replies from: Swimmer963, FiftyTwo
↑ comment by Swimmer963 (Miranda Dixon-Luinenburg) (Swimmer963) · 2013-01-16T03:01:22.217Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

It's going to be a survey to fill out online once a week. And I know we won't get the best quality data, necessarily, but I think this is the first study that's ever been done on this, AND I don't have a research background, so if the results come back super interesting, Shannon Friedman might try to recruit some people who do have a research background and are interested in doing it more rigorously.

↑ comment by FiftyTwo · 2013-01-16T01:30:08.588Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Also, the subset of people who participate on lw is going to be an incredibly unrepresentative sample,

Replies from: Swimmer963
↑ comment by Swimmer963 (Miranda Dixon-Luinenburg) (Swimmer963) · 2013-01-16T03:02:21.559Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

I'm likely going to run the same experiment with a group recruited through a different medium–just trying to decide which one would be the most "random"/"representative of the general population", but also within my means.

Replies from: erratio
↑ comment by erratio · 2013-01-16T16:40:20.940Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

flyers around your university? Still not really representative but it would get you the standard WEIRD group

Replies from: Swimmer963
↑ comment by Swimmer963 (Miranda Dixon-Luinenburg) (Swimmer963) · 2013-01-16T17:18:24.378Z · LW(p) · GW(p)

Would likely have to jump through the hoops of the university ethics board... Might be worthwhile though.