QE COMMUNITY COVID DATA CHALLENGE: April 26 - May 3

This Data Challenge is an opportunity for the international QE community to play a role in helping address the global COVID-19 pandemic. We are uniquely placed to help the world make sense of how people are reacting to this crisis, how those reactions are changing over time and in response to events, and how those responses are differing over time or between places.

The goal of this challenge is to collaboratively analyze public data to generate insights that have the potential to make a difference in public policy or understanding the social and cultural dimensions of this crisis. Ultimately, our findings will be publicized to let the broader public get a deeper understanding of our collective response to COVID-19 and its effects.

This event is open to everyone, regardless of experience level. Register now!

(Interested in what is unique about a QE data challenge? Short essay available here in PDF or here online)

GOALS

The QE community is uniquely placed to help the world understand reactions to this crisis, how those reactions are changing over time and in response to new developments or changing information, and how those responses are differing over time or between places.

By helping develop our understanding of this global crisis, participants in the COVID Data Challenge will also have a chance to:

1. Meet and interact with other members of the community and collaborate on meaningful work

2. Learn from each other about tools, methods, data, and (of course) the issues in this global crisis

3. Work with experienced mentors in the QE community

4. Begin a broader discussion of the wider social implications/applications of QE

5. Create publications or posters for ICQE or other conferences or journals; develop social media campaigns about important issues in the crisis; disseminate a YouTube or other video analyzing the crisis; create op-eds or other public journalism analyzing the crisis; or build an interactive website to let the broader public get a deeper understanding of our collective response to COVID-19 and its effects

TIMELINE AND EVENTS

Registration and teams

Registration for the Challenge is open until 11.59pm Central European Time on Friday, APRIL 24. Registration is easy! Just click here and tell us a little about your skills and interests so we can match you with a team.

Teams will be announced on Saturday, April 25

Group events

Sunday April 26: The Challenge starts with a kickoff meeting on Zoom

Wednesday April 29: All teams will meet together on Zoom to present work in progress, "pitch" and get feedback on their analysis plans, get help if needed, and share resources and ideas with other teams

Sunday May 3: Challenge ends with a final meeting on Zoom where teams will share their final analyses and make plans for dissemination

TEAMS WILL BE SENT ZOOM LINKS BY EMAIL

Times

There is no time during the day when North and South America, Europe, Africa, Australia and Asia are all at a reasonable time for people to work. So, given the number of participants, we are planning to break the challenge into two groups:

(1) North and South America, Australia, and Asia

(2) North and South America, Europe, and Africa

We will assign teams to each group when teams are formed on Saturday.

Splitting this way makes it possible to choose reasonable times for everyone, still allow for multi-national and multi-regional teams, and also makes the Zoom meetings a little more manageable.

The meeting times will be:

Group 1: 8pm in the Eastern US; 10am +1 day in Sydney

Group 2: 12noon in the Eastern US; 6pm in Paris/Berlin/etc

Dissemination

Teams will have the opportunity to consult with dissemination experts about producing publications or posters, social media campaigns, videos, op-eds, or interactive websites to let the broader public get a deeper understanding of our collective response to COVID-19 and its effects

DATASETS AND RESOURCES

We have curated datasets, as well as possible challenge topics and (soon) worked examples that teams can use as part of their analyses:

Curated Data Sets

Possible Topics

Of course, teams can also locate and analyze alternative COVID-19 datasets as well!

Background on Quantitative Ethnography is available here (resource page), here (video), here (conference proceedings), and here (book). Some useful tools can be found here (website), although there are lots of other QE approaches people use.

You can also check out the upcoming International Conference on Quantitative Ethnography (October 2020). Submissions are being accepted until June 15, and papers/posters from the Data Challenge are warmly invited.

GETTING INVOLVED

The data challenge is now complete. Check out the Participants and Results page to see some of the results.

You can also find out more about the data challenge and about quantitative ethnography @QE_soc on Twitter or by email: data <dot> challenge <at> qesoc <dot> org