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Research On Funniness Lab
Informed Consent Letter
Ethics Id: Pro00118301
Stephen Graham, MSc. June 2023
The Research On Funniness Lab project (ROFLab.com) is collecting humorous texts and memes (collectively jokes) and joke ratings from the public to provide a tagged data set for a variety machine learning tasks. This project forms a part of the research being done by Stephen Graham at the University of Lethbridge in Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada for his PhD. studies.
The jokes will be analysed and, together with their ratings, will be used to train models of humour appreciation — teaching computers to “get the joke.” The submissions will be analysed and published as a data set for other humour researchers. Analysis of the submissions may be published. The aggregated results will be used to seed a longitudinal study (over time) about changes in the way we tell and rate jokes.
Participation in this study is open to Internet users worldwide who are at least 13 years of age. Participants are expected to have some working knowledge of English. Participants are responsible for their own access to ROFLab.com
There is no compensation provided to any participant in this study.
There is no cost to participate in this study. (Participants are responsible for their own costs incurred for accessing the site).
Participation in this project is voluntary.
You may withdraw your participation at any time and for any reason. You may withdraw your participation if you feel unsafe or uncomfortable.
If you choose to withdraw, you may do so on the website by choosing “Deactivate Account” from the User Panel. You will be presented with two methods to deactivate your account:
“Save Everything” will save your demographics, submitted jokes and ratings for research purposes and remove any contact information you have provided.
“Save Nothing” will discard your demographics, submitted jokes and ratings, and it will remove any contact information you have provided.
In either case, you no longer be able to contribute to this research project without re-applying.
We may terminate your participation.
The researchers may terminate your participation at any time and for any reason. Reason for termination may include (but is not limited to):
Abuse of system resources,
Submitting illegal or otherwise inappropriate content,
Submitting harassing or intimidating content
Procedures
If you choose to participate, you will be granted access to the ROFLab.com website. There are two primary ways to contribute to the research: rating jokes and sharing jokes.
Joke Rating: You will be presented with jokes (texts, memes, or both) and you will be asked to provide a rating of how funny you think the joke is. You may rate as many jokes as you choose, and you may return to the website during the course of the research to rate new jokes that have been added. We will attempt to only show you each joke in our database once, but jokes may be submitted by multiple participants. You are encouraged to rate the joke and indicate that you have seen it on the site before.
Submitting jokes: For each of your contributed jokes you will be asked to provide some information about how you would categorize your joke. These jokes will be presented to other participants for them to rate. You may return to the site multiple times to submit additional jokes and to see an average rating of your jokes. If you discover a joke online that you find offensive, there is a method to flag the joke. These jokes will be reviewed and might be removed or restricted in the database.
Duration
Your participation in the study is from the start of your consent to participate until the close of the study or until your withdrawal from the study, whichever period is longer. Each individual session could take as little as 1 minute. There is no minimum requirement of participation. You may visit the site to rate and/or submit jokes as often or as infrequently as you choose during the data collection.
Risks
Privacy: While reasonable effort is being undertaken to protect the privacy and confidentiality of any personal information you provide, there is a risk of loss of privacy (for example, because of a data breach). This is as small chance but still a possibility.
Language and situations: Jokes submitted to the site are funny to some but may be offensive or triggering to others. While we will continually look for and remove obvious non-jokes, we will not be censoring joke content.
Benefits
There are no direct benefits to you for participating in this study.
Privacy and Confidentiality
Your privacy is protected and any personal information you provide will be protected to the best of our ability, but this is not a complete guarantee.
Collected Data: We will be collecting your age (by range), gender (if you want to share), education level (if you want to share), and location (if you want to share). We will collect your e-mail address if you want to make an account and to allow us to contact you. Our servers will automatically collect the IP address that your browser presents.
Publishing Aggregated Data: We will be publishing some aggregated (grouped) demographics based on all our participants, but none of your personally identifying information (participant name, e-mail address, demographics) will be published.
De-identification: Before processing or interpreting any of the contributed information, personally identifying information will be removed and replaced with an arbitrary and unique participant ID number. This substitution task will be automated and irreversible. There will be no way to reconnect any of the data to the personally identifying information.
Data Storage: All data will be stored in a database on a password-secured server. E-mail addresses (used for account names, repeat visitors, and to contact you if needed) will be stored in a separate table from the submitted demographic data. Only the principal investigator and their team will have access to the raw, collected data.
Data Retention: These de-identified data will be kept for research and analysis for a period of up to 20 years following the completion of the study.
Disclosure of Private Information: We will not disclose private or identifying information (like names, usernames, passwords, and presumed IP addresses) except:
to law enforcement or other agency if required by law or under warrant, or
as permitted by you under a separate agreement. (We’ll reach out at the end of our data collection period.)
Contact and Follow-up
This proposed research has been reviewed for ethical acceptability and approved by the University of Alberta Research Ethics Board (REB2) on behalf of the University of Lethbridge and the Lethbridge College Research Ethics Board.
If you have questions or concerns about this project, do not hesitate to contact the
principal investigator:
Stephen Graham, MSc, ISP, I.T.C.P.
PhD Student, University of Lethbridge
Instructor, Lethbridge College
grahsm00@uleth.ca
If you have any questions regarding your rights as a research participant, you may contact the University of Alberta Research Ethics Office at reoffice@ualberta.ca or 780-492-2615 and quote Ethics ID Pro00118301. This office is independent of the study investigators.
Statement of Acknowledgement
By continuing to use the website, you acknowledge that:
you are at least 13 years of age
you have read and understood this information, including the risks outlined above,
you have all your questions answered regarding this study,
you have the right to withdraw from this study at any time for any reason before the data have been de-identified,
you consent to the use of the data you provide for the purposes of this study, and
you are participating voluntarily.
You will receive a copy of this informed consent document to the e-mail address you provided. Additionally, you may retrieve a copy of this informed consent document at any time from the website.