Navigating the Challenges of Multi-Site Research

Our full day-workshop focuses on challenges encountered by researchers attempting to design and conduct studies that span 2 or more social computing platforms, such as parallel sites for different language populations, different platforms, or different user experience designs. Social computing researchers are increasingly interested in these studies that examine user behavior across different sites. For example, researchers have conducted multi-sited studies to understand user behavior across culture, language, and media. In such studies, researchers are challenged to develop and execute methodologies that allow them to navigate frameworks that enable comparisons among multiple sites. Researchers face challenges adapting their methodologies to handle diverse populations, regulations, large datasets and more. The goal of this workshop is to come to a common understanding of what multi-site research is and how we can continue to expand and incentivize this form of research within the CSCW community.