About Research and Ushahidi

Ushahidi has a small but vibrant research community analyzing deployments and larger trends in online collaboration, cooperative work and crowdsourcing.

Ushahidi has teamed up with a number of universities and research groups in the past.   Examples include the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, University of Alberta, Columbia University, NorthWestern University, Tufts (Fletcher School) and more. We will be collecting details and sharing those research partners listings. And, are open to ongoing opportunities.

Research comes in many formats, research, data for interdisciplinary research.

Tips for new Researchers

If you want to research data.....

If you want to do qualitative research....

If you want to research qualitative research....

If you want to see more examples of research about ushahidi see

Ushahidi encourages research on:

Here are some of the topics that we recommend for research:

• Multilingual deployments - standards, best practices and requirements
• Topical Maps: Comparative Election Mapping, Corruption Mapping, CrisisMapping and Environmental mapping.
• Use Case analysis
• Impact, Evaluation (See: Impact Practical Guide to Evaluating (Knight Foundation))
• Ushahidi implementation in the most used CMS: Joomla, Drupal and Wordpress.

What topics do you think need more research?

Some of the topics we've identified that need more research include:

• Multilingual deployments - standards, best practices and requirements
• Topical Maps: Comparative Election Mapping, Corruption Mapping, CrisisMapping and Environmental mapping.
• Use Case analysis

Research Mentors wanted

We would like to partner senior researchers to guide research and help us build a stronger research ecosystem. Please Contact Us

To connect to fellow researchers:

Join Ushahidi Community Mailing list: community AT list.ushahidi.com

• To subscribe send an empty email to community-subscribe AT list.ushahidi.com

We also have two places to share Ushahidi research: our community site and a Mendeley group dedicated to sharing Ushahidi/Ushahidi-related research. If you have a guest blog post that you'd like to contribute just let us know!

Check our Getting Involved wiki pages and Contact Us.

How can we encourage more OS research?

Paper presented at ICT4D 2012 mentioned that there is a decrease in OpenSource Research. What programs are needed to support this part of the community?

Help wanted:

The wiki home for research could use the following:

• a fresh coat of paint
• more research listed
• a process for storage to Ushahidi dropbox (if we are allowed to store it)
• Community research programming (eg. another data ethics hangout)
• Help us help you: Which resources can use to further your own work (literature, data, contact info of people to interview, etc).
  

Ways that Ushahidi has been used for Research and Education:

1. Teaching Children - Cost of Chicken (video)
2. Teaching University Students - Software Development(See: Students Learn Programming with Ushahidi)
3. Academic Research Projects: This encompasses everything from MA and PHD work to field work to collaborative studies. I would encourage you to peruse our blog for all the posts on Research and Academia. (Also see: A movement of hundreds of small movements.)
4. Research and tools collected by USIP (United States Institute of Peace)
5. Professional Research:
   • Crowdglobe 
   • Wikipedia Sources