Dataset Information

Crowdsourced Identification of Possible Allergy-Associated Factors: Automated Hypothesis Generation and Validation Using Crowdsourcing Services.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND:Hypothesis generation is an essential task for clinical research, and it can require years of research experience to formulate a meaningful hypothesis. Recent studies have endeavored to apply crowdsourcing to generate novel hypotheses for research. In this study, we apply crowdsourcing to explore previously unknown allergy-associated factors. OBJECTIVE:In this study, we aimed to collect and test hypotheses of unknown allergy-associated factors using a crowdsourcing service. METHODS:Using a series of questionnaires, we asked crowdsourcing participants to provide hypotheses on associated factors for seven different allergies, and validated the candidate hypotheses with odds ratios calculated for each associated factor. We repeated this abductive validation process to identify a set of reliable hypotheses. RESULTS:We obtained two primary findings: (1) crowdsourcing showed that 8 of the 13 known hypothesized allergy risks were statically significant; and (2) among the total of 157 hypotheses generated by the crowdsourcing service, 75 hypotheses were statistically significant allergy-associated factors, comprising the 8 known risks and 53 previously unknown allergy-associated factors. These findings suggest that there are still many topics to be examined in future allergy studies. CONCLUSIONS:Crowdsourcing generated new hypotheses on allergy-associated factors. In the near future, clinical trials should be conducted to validate the hypotheses generated in this study.

SUBMITTER: Aramaki E

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5449648 | biostudies-literature | 2017 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Crowdsourced Identification of Possible Allergy-Associated Factors: Automated Hypothesis Generation and Validation Using Crowdsourcing Services.

Aramaki Eiji E Shikata Shuko S Ayaya Satsuki S Kumagaya Shin-Ichiro SI

JMIR research protocols 20170516 5

<h4>Background</h4>Hypothesis generation is an essential task for clinical research, and it can require years of research experience to formulate a meaningful hypothesis. Recent studies have endeavored to apply crowdsourcing to generate novel hypotheses for research. In this study, we apply crowdsourcing to explore previously unknown allergy-associated factors.<h4>Objective</h4>In this study, we aimed to collect and test hypotheses of unknown allergy-associated factors using a crowdsourcing serv ...[more]

PMID: 28512079

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Project description:BACKGROUND:Web-based crowdsourcing promotes the goals achieved effectively by gaining solutions from public groups via the internet, and it has gained extensive attention in both business and academia. As a new mode of sourcing, crowdsourcing has been proven to improve efficiency, quality, and diversity of tasks. However, little attention has been given to crowdsourcing in the health sector. OBJECTIVE:Crowdsourced health care information websites enable patients to post their questions in the question pool, which is accessible to all doctors, and the patients wait for doctors to respond to their questions. Since the sustainable development of crowdsourced health care information websites depends on the participation of the doctors, we aimed to investigate the factors influencing doctors' participation in providing health care information in these websites from the perspective of the elaboration-likelihood model. METHODS:We collected 1524 questions with complete patient-doctor interaction processes from an online health community in China to test all the hypotheses. We divided the doctors into 2 groups based on the sequence of the answers: (1) doctor who answered the patient's question first and (2) the doctors who answered that question after the doctor who answered first. All analyses were conducted using the ordinary least squares method. RESULTS:First, the ability of the doctor who first answered the health-related question was found to positively influence the participation of the following doctors who answered after the first doctor responded to the question (?offline1=.177, P<.001; ?offline2=.063, P=.048; ?online=.418, P<.001). Second, the reward that the patient offered for the best answer showed a positive effect on doctors' participation (?=.019, P<.001). Third, the question's complexity was found to positively moderate the relationships between the ability of the first doctor who answered and the participation of the following doctors (?=.186, P=.05) and to mitigate the effect between the reward and the participation of the following doctors (?=-.003, P=.10). CONCLUSIONS:This study has both theoretical and practical contributions. Online health community managers can build effective incentive mechanisms to encourage highly competent doctors to participate in the provision of medical services in crowdsourced health care information websites and they can increase the reward incentives for each question to increase the participation of the doctors.

Project description:BackgroundSystematic reviews (SRs) are often cited as the highest level of evidence available as they involve the identification and synthesis of published studies on a topic. Unfortunately, it is increasingly challenging for small teams to complete SR procedures in a reasonable time period, given the exponential rise in the volume of primary literature. Crowdsourcing has been postulated as a potential solution.ObjectiveThe feasibility objective of this study was to determine whether a crowd would be willing to perform and complete abstract and full text screening. The validation objective was to assess the quality of the crowd's work, including retention of eligible citations (sensitivity) and work performed for the investigative team, defined as the percentage of citations excluded by the crowd.MethodsWe performed a prospective study evaluating crowdsourcing essential components of an SR, including abstract screening, document retrieval, and full text assessment. Using CrowdScreenSR citation screening software, 2323 articles from 6 SRs were available to an online crowd. Citations excluded by less than or equal to 75% of the crowd were moved forward for full text assessment. For the validation component, performance of the crowd was compared with citation review through the accepted, gold standard, trained expert approach.ResultsOf 312 potential crowd members, 117 (37.5%) commenced abstract screening and 71 (22.8%) completed the minimum requirement of 50 citation assessments. The majority of participants were undergraduate or medical students (192/312, 61.5%). The crowd screened 16,988 abstracts (median: 8 per citation; interquartile range [IQR] 7-8), and all citations achieved the minimum of 4 assessments after a median of 42 days (IQR 26-67). Crowd members retrieved 83.5% (774/927) of the articles that progressed to the full text phase. A total of 7604 full text assessments were completed (median: 7 per citation; IQR 3-11). Citations from all but 1 review achieved the minimum of 4 assessments after a median of 36 days (IQR 24-70), with 1 review remaining incomplete after 3 months. When complete crowd member agreement at both levels was required for exclusion, sensitivity was 100% (95% CI 97.9-100) and work performed was calculated at 68.3% (95% CI 66.4-70.1). Using the predefined alternative 75% exclusion threshold, sensitivity remained 100% and work performed increased to 72.9% (95% CI 71.0-74.6; P<.001). Finally, when a simple majority threshold was considered, sensitivity decreased marginally to 98.9% (95% CI 96.0-99.7; P=.25) and work performed increased substantially to 80.4% (95% CI 78.7-82.0; P<.001).ConclusionsCrowdsourcing of citation screening for SRs is feasible and has reasonable sensitivity and specificity. By expediting the screening process, crowdsourcing could permit the investigative team to focus on more complex SR tasks. Future directions should focus on developing a user-friendly online platform that allows research teams to crowdsource their reviews.

Project description:Recent advancements in in situ methods, such as multiplexed in situ RNA hybridization and in situ RNA sequencing, have deepened our understanding of the way biological processes are spatially organized in tissues. Automated image processing and spot-calling algorithms for analyzing in situ transcriptomics images have many parameters which need to be tuned for optimal detection. Having ground truth datasets (images where there is very high confidence on the accuracy of the detected spots) is essential for evaluating these algorithms and tuning their parameters. We present a first-in-kind open-source toolkit and framework for in situ transcriptomics image analysis that incorporates crowdsourced annotations, alongside expert annotations, as a source of ground truth for the analysis of in situ transcriptomics images. The kit includes tools for preparing images for crowdsourcing annotation to optimize crowdsourced workers' ability to annotate these images reliably, performing quality control (QC) on worker annotations, extracting candidate parameters for spot-calling algorithms from sample images, tuning parameters for spot-calling algorithms, and evaluating spot-calling algorithms and worker performance. These tools are wrapped in a modular pipeline with a flexible structure that allows users to take advantage of crowdsourced annotations from any source of their choice. We tested the pipeline using real and synthetic in situ transcriptomics images and annotations from the Amazon Mechanical Turk system obtained via Quanti.us. Using real images from in situ experiments and simulated images produced by one of the tools in the kit, we studied worker sensitivity to spot characteristics and established rules for annotation QC. We explored and demonstrated the use of ground truth generated in this way for validating spot-calling algorithms and tuning their parameters, and confirmed that consensus crowdsourced annotations are a viable substitute for expert-generated ground truth for these purposes.

Dataset Information

Crowdsourced Identification of Possible Allergy-Associated Factors: Automated Hypothesis Generation and Validation Using Crowdsourcing Services.

Publications

Crowdsourced Identification of Possible Allergy-Associated Factors: Automated Hypothesis Generation and Validation Using Crowdsourcing Services.

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