I am seeking help for a new (experimental) software platform that I created. The platform serves dual purposes:
(1) It aims to help provide peer feedback on your writing.
(2) It aims to create an online research platform for behavioral science.
How does it provide peer feedback?
www.r3ciprocity.com is a peer proofreading and editing platform based on the sharing economy. I was always uncomfortable asking for peer feedback, and I thought there was a better way. The system reduces the anxiety of seeking peer feedback by identifying people who would be eager to help. It also helps folks with a knack for editing apply their skills in a relevant field.
How does it work? The platform incentivizes people to pay their skills forward. Your can pay for credits, or you earn credits for editing the documents of others. These credits can be used to have your own documents edited. In other words, you can get free editing as long as you reciprocate in turn. If you maintain a high enough quality across enough documents, you can convert these credits to money. System fees only apply to these paid transactions.
Click here for a YouTube video.
How can you do research on it?
I am looking for help or possible collaborators to do behavioral science research on this platform.
Many people have recently commented on the validity of behavioral science. Findings are questioned because of (a) the difficultly of replicating studies, and (b) we use methods that may be limited in the inferences we can draw. For example, it is nearly impossible to demonstrate causation with secondary data, and survey results often have large difficult-to-remove biases, such as low response rates and subject-expectancy effects because respondents have to exert extra effort to complete a survey.
In the last 5 years, a major innovation has occurred in the software industry that should address much of these validity concerns. To obtain valid inferences of users who are engaged, most software companies implement A/B testing, which are essentially, double-blind randomized controlled trials. The user is first prompted that information about their behavior may be used to improve the system (usually in the Terms and Conditions, and pop-up), and then different versions of a website are randomly applied to users. Here, my goal is eventually implement this same technique in the future, but allow behavioral science researchers to get access to this technique through this platform.
My plan is also eventually contribute a portion of the profits (if it occurs) to research on behavioral science (ie. doctoral student scholarships).
Click Here for a YouTube video.
If you are interested in helping out, please:
(1) Submit documents on www.r3ciprocity.com.
(2) Subscribe to the YouTube channel.
(3) Contact me (djmaslach@gmail.com) if the potential for research intrigues you.
Take care,
David (Dave) Maslach