Welcome back, all. It’s been a few months, and I hope everyone has been enjoying the great science updates from a variety of projects and is still basking in #SciFund’s warm glowing warming glow. We’re even starting to gear up for #SciFund 2, Electric Boogaloo, so keep your eyes peeled.

But before we jump into round 2, Jai and I wanted to know more about round 1. What made for a successful project? How does a crowdfunded proposal compare to a non-crowdfunded grant proposal? What do you need to do to make #SciFund work for you?

To get at these questions and more, we administered a survey to the participants of #SciFund, and we’re starting to analyze it. We have a lot of ideas about relationships and hypotheses to test, but, in the spirit of crowdsourcing, we wanted to crowdsource some of this part of the project to you – the hypothesis generation. I’d say we’d open up the data, but, sadly, cannot due to Human Subjects requirements (see end of this post for an explanation).

So, below the cut is the survey we administered as well as the data fields from Dr. Zen’s excellent efforts. Take a look at it, and post any hypotheses or analyses you want to see done! Feel free to get as fancy, detailed, or nutty as possible, bearing in mind that we have 48 data points, and some of the data are continuous and some categorical.

Note: I entered all of this, then realized I left out the rockethub specific information that I wanted to include first.  Rather than redoing the numbering scheme that Jai had so graciously typed in, um, I continued it…backwards. 

 

General

-4. Total amount raised

-3. Goal

-2. Percent of Goal Achieved

-1. Number of Views

0. Full temporal record of views

Personal Information

1. Name (we cannot show you this)

2. SciFund Challenge Project Name (we won’t be showing this either)

3. Age

4. Gender

5. Ethnicity

6. Current position (grad student, professor, in industry, etc.)

7. Your institution (university, government, etc.)

8. What is the discipline of your highest degree?

9. What is your highest degree you have completed?

Prior grants

10. How many hours did you spend on your last grant proposal?

11. Over the past five years, what approximate percentage of your grant proposals have been funded?

Social media experience

12. Do you use Facebook?

13. If you use Facebook, how many Facebook friends do you have now?

14. Do you use Twitter?

15. If you use Twitter, how many Twitter followers do you have now?

16. If you use Twitter, for how many months have you been using it?

17. Do you have a science-oriented blog?

18. If you have a science-oriented blog, how many times a month on average do you post to it?

19. If you have a science-oriented blog, for how many months has it existed?

20. If you are engaged in other types of social media, please describe.

Other science outreach

21. In the past twelve months, how many times have you: (possible response: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4+)
      Written a science-oriented article for a general interest news platform
      Given a public talk about science intended for a audience of non-scientists
      Been interviewed by a journalist for a science story

Prior video experience

22. Did you have any experience with video editing prior to participating in the SciFund Challenge?

23. If you do have video experience, how many videos have you worked on (no matter how short)?

SciFund Challenge project preparation

24. How many hours did you spend (possible response: 0, 1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7+):
      Writing project text
      Working on your video
      Preparing images
      Preparing and sending out project rewards
      Making comments to other SciFund Challenge projects on the wiki

25. To what degree did you change your SciFund Challenge project in response to feedback on the wiki or RocketHub? (possible response: 1-5,  1 – no change, 5 – complete redo)
      Text
      Images
      Video
      Rewards

26. Did you shorten your video?

27. How many times did you change your video after posting it?

SciFund Challenge project promotion

28. What percentage of the contributors to your project do you personally know?

29. How many hours did you spend promoting your project?

30. How much effort did you make to spread the word about your project during: (possible responses:  no effort,  sporadic effort, weekly effort, effort multiple times a week, daily effort)
      November 1-15
      November 16-30
      December 1-15

31. If you stopped promoting your project before the end of the SciFund campaign period, please describe why. (long answer)

32. What methods did you use to spread the word about your project (possible responses: 1-5,  1 – not at all, 5 – a great deal)?
      E-mail
      Facebook
      Twitter
      Google +
      Blogging on your own blog
      Guest blogging on others’ blogs
      One on one conversations
      Public talks/appearances
      Communicating with journalists/bloggers

33. If you used other methods to spread the word about your project, please describe. (long answer)

34. How many press or new media figures did you notify about your project?

35. Did you spread the word about your project via (possible responses: 1-5,  1 – not at all, 5 – a great deal):
      Personal connections
      Professional connections

36. How many live events (not via computer) did you use to promote your project?

37. If you hosted live events in support of your project, what was the average attendance at these events?

38. How many hours did you spend promoting OTHER SciFund projects?

39. What methods did you use to spread the word about OTHER SciFund projects  (possible responses: 1-5,  1 – not at all, 5 – a great deal)?
      E-mail
      Facebook
      Twitter
      Google +
      Blogging on your own blog
      Guest blogging on others’ blogs
      One on one conversations
      Public talks/appearances
      Communicating with journalists/bloggers

SciFund Challenge project success

40. What do you feel worked to get your project funded? (long answer)

41. What do you feel did not work to get your project funded? (long answer)

42. Do you feel that your SciFund Challenge campaign was a success? Why or why not? (long answer)

43. Do you feel that the SciFund Challenge as a whole was a success? Why or why not? (long answer)

Zen’s Data

44. # Of Contributors

45. Mean Donation

46. Description Length (# of characters)

47. Number of Tweets

48. Number of Facebook Likes

49. Number of video views

N.B. I’d say we’d just open up the data to you, but, doing this kind of survey actually jumps into Human Subjects territory, so Jai and I had to go through the fun of the IRB process, and hence the data is closed. We wish it were otherwise, but there are some solid reasons behind the process and why it exists, and it’s important to respect them as well as the privacy of the participants involved. However, as it’s all collected from public data, if you want to analyze the data collected by Dr. Zen, have at it, and feel free to send us your results. We’ll post ’em with full credit!