Using crowdsourcing at an academic conference to develop STI testing messaging for public dissemination

Alissa Davis; Eneyi Kpokiri; Chunyan Li; Suzanne Day; Xumeng Yan; Gifty Marley; Sara E Landers; Joseph D Tucker

doi:10.1136/sextrans-2023-056002

Using crowdsourcing at an academic conference to develop STI testing messaging for public dissemination

Sex Transm Infect. 2024 Feb 19;100(2):110-112. doi: 10.1136/sextrans-2023-056002.

Authors

Alissa Davis¹, Eneyi Kpokiri², Chunyan Li^{3

4}, Suzanne Day⁵, Xumeng Yan⁶, Gifty Marley⁴, Sara E Landers⁷, Joseph D Tucker^{2

4

5}

Affiliations

¹ School of Social Work, Columbia University, New York, New York, USA ad3324@columbia.edu.
² Clinical Research Department, Faculty of Infectious and Tropical Diseases, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, London, UK.
³ Tokyo College, The University of Tokyo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo, Japan.
⁴ UNC-Project China, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China.
⁵ Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Medicine, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA.
⁶ Department of Community Health Sciences, University of California Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, USA.
⁷ School of Social Work, Columbia University, New York, New York, USA.

Abstract

Objectives: We provide a guide to conducting a crowdsourcing activity at an international sexually transmitted infection (STI) conference to design public messaging about STI testing and disseminating that messaging via social media.

Methods: A speaker gave a presentation at a conference plenary session on the concepts of cocreation, crowdsourcing and designathons, and the application of these participatory approaches in public health research. To illustrate one of these approaches (crowdsourcing), attendees in the audience were asked to take part in a voluntary participatory activity, in which they would pair up with a fellow attendee sitting nearby and write down an idea on a blank notecard. Dyads were given 10 min to create an entry responding to the prompt, 'Write something that inspires gonorrhoea and/or chlamydia testing (eg, picture, jingle, rhyme)'. Each entry was judged by at least four independent judges on a scale of 0 (lowest quality) to 10 (highest quality) based on their innovation and potential to promote chlamydia/gonorrhoea testing. Scores were averaged to determine the finalist entries.

Results: We received 32 entries. The average score was 6.41 and scores ranged from 4.5 to 8 (median 6.63, IQR 5.75, 7.06). Half of entries (n=16) were slogans, 15.6% (n=5) were poems/rhymes, 12.5% (n=4) were memes/images, 9.4% (n=3) were programme implementation ideas, 3.1% (n=1) was a song verse, and 3.1% (n=1) was a video idea. One finalist entry was a meme and received 720 impressions, 120 engagements, 27 detail expands, 19 likes, 6 reposts and 1 response on Twitter. The second finalist entry was a slogan and received 242 impressions, 16 engagements, 6 detail expands, 4 likes and 2 reposts.

Conclusions: Conducting crowdsourcing activities at future conferences may be an innovative, feasible way to develop and disseminate engaging and important STI and other health messaging to the public in a short period of time.

Keywords: Chlamydia Infections; Communication; gonorrhoea.

MeSH terms

Chlamydia*
Crowdsourcing*
Gonorrhea* / diagnosis
Humans
Public Health
Sexually Transmitted Diseases* / diagnosis
Sexually Transmitted Diseases* / prevention & control

Abstract

MeSH terms

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