RoSE: Social Science Research Methods in

Digital Humanities Contexts

Dana Solomon, @danasolomonLindsay Thomas, @lindsaycthomas, @4Hum

Dept of EnglishUniversity of California, Santa Barbara

RoSE: rose.english.ucsb.edu

Documentation website: rosedocumentation.wordpress.com

Research Group and Technical Description:

Director:Alan Liu (Professor, English Dept.)Co-directors:Rama Hoetzlein (Ph.D., Media Arts & Technology Program; Project Scientist, English Dept.)Rita Raley (Associate Professor, English Dept.)

Research Assistants:Ivana Andjelkovic (MAT)Salman Bakht (MAT)Joshua Dickinson (MAT)Michael Hetrick (MAT)Paul Jacobs (MAT)Andrew Kalaidjian (English)Eric Nebeker (English)Dana Solomon (English)Lindsay Thomas (English)

Technical Description of RoSE:RoSE is a Web-accessible system developed in the open-source Ruby on Rails programming environment on top of a MySQL relational database. It uses the open-source Adobe Flex framework with the Flare library for visualizations. Currently, it is pre-loaded with metadata about persons and documents text-mined from the YAGO knowledge base (6,756 people, 10,703 docs); Project Gutenberg (11,921 people, 32,996 docs); the Social Networks & Archival Contexts project (SNAC; 3,412 people, 28,036 docs); and datasets manually entered by users.

Examples of Student Storyboards:

Open Format Questions:

16. What do you think overall of the RoSE concept (separate from any current technical or functional issues)?

26. Overall, what functional feature of RoSE do you think most needs improvement, and why?

See the complete questionnaire in the White Paper submitted to the NEH at http://rosedocumentation.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/rose-white-paper-as-submitted-to-neh.pdf

See the complete questionnaire in the White Paper submitted to the NEH at http://rosedocumentation.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/rose-white-paper-as-submitted-to-neh.pdf

Closed Format Questions:Leading Question:11. Who do you feel would be most likely to use RoSE? Please check all that apply.___ Students___ Instructors (for classroom use)___ Individual researchers___ Other

IF OTHER, PLEASE EXPLAIN WHO:

Importance Question:14. Which of the following do you think is the MOST IMPORTANT feature of RoSE?a. The ability to use RoSE to conceptualize networks of relationships between users, authors, and documentsb. The ability to use RoSE to add authors, documents, and relationships to preexisting bibliographical datac. The ability to use RoSE to visualize social networksd. The ability to use RoSE to create collections of bibliographical informatione. The ability to use RoSE to participate in shared collectionsf. The ability to use RoSE to build an understanding of an author, movement, or other phenomenon that can be shaped into an argument or story (e.g., through the storyboarding feature)

Closed Format Questions:

See the complete questionnaire in the White Paper submitted to the NEH at http://rosedocumentation.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/rose-white-paper-as-submitted-to-neh.pdf

Likert Scale Question:17. Overall, I am satisfied with how easy it is to use RoSE.

STRONGLY STRONGLYAGREE 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 DISAGREE

COMMENTS:

Rating Scale Question:13. Rank the following features of RoSE on a scale from 1 to 5 according to what you found most useful for performing your tasks in RoSE.

1 = Most important; 2 = Important; 3 = Neutral; 4 = Unimportant; 5 = Very unimportant; N/A = Not Applicable___ Profile pages for authors and documents___ Data visualizations___ History tracks___ Collections___ Storyboards

"I think the storyboard could be improved with some small changes such as more color options, being able to adjust the size of the canvas and of the nodes, being able to edit and abbreviate the text that appears with the nodes, and of course being able to save."

"My largest frustration came from the flaws in the program itself. Not being able to save my storyboard as I progressed; not being able to add things to my collection while working in storyboard mode; having to start over if I accidentally deleted a node that I needed, which funny enough happened in my final attempt to place this project together at which time I decided to draw in Cathy Davidson myself."

“Another aspect of the storyboard that I struggled with was the size of the workspace itself. I think it would be beneficial to have the ability to ‘zoom in’ or ‘zoom out,’ allowing for the distance in between the nodes to have significance." "Additionally, I wished I could alter the size of the nodes— for instance, making the strong connections larger and the minor connections physically smaller."

Student Feedback:

See more student responses in the White Paper submitted to the NEH at http://rosedocumentation.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/rose-white-paper-as-submitted-to-neh.pdf

RoSE:

rose.english.ucsb.edu

Learn More About RoSE:

rosedocumentation.wordpress.com

RoSE Demo Video:

rosedocumentation.wordpress.com/2012/11/16/demo-video/