Castellum at University of Hamburg

Castellum Community Meeting

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DOI

Dr. Lennart Wittkuhn
lennart.wittkuhn@uni-hamburg.de

Institute of Psychology, University of Hamburg, Germany

September 25, 2023

About

Me

🧑‍🔬 Position: Postdoctoral Researcher & Lab Manager at the Institute of Psychology at the University of Hamburg

🎓 Education: BSc Psychology & MSc Cognitive Neuroscience (TU Dresden), PhD Cognitive Neuroscience (FU Berlin)

🔬 Research: I study the role of fast neural memory reactivation (“replay”) in the human brain using fMRI

đź”— Contact: You can connect with me via email, Twitter, Mastodon, GitHub or LinkedIn

ℹ️ Info: Find out more about my work on my website, Google Scholar and ORCiD

This presentation

đź’» Slides: Slides are publicly available at https://lennartwittkuhn.com/castellum-uhh-presentation

📦 Software: Reproducible slides built with Quarto and deployed to GitHub Pages using GitHub Actions

Source: Source code is publicly available on GitHub at https://github.com/lnnrtwttkhn/castellum-uhh-presentation

🙏 Contact: I am happy for any feedback or suggestions via email or GitHub issues. Thank you!

Agenda

  1. Background
  2. Castellum at UHH
  3. Discussion

Background

The Faculty of Psychology and Human Movement Science

Institute of Psychology: 13 professorships
  • General Psychology
  • Industrial/Organizational Psychology
  • Biological Psychology & Neuropsychology
  • Differential Psychology & Psychological Assessment
  • Developmental Psychology
  • Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy
  • Clinical Neuroscience
  • Cognitive Psychology
  • Educational Psychology & Personality Development
  • Psychology with focus on Quantitative Methods
  • Mechanisms of Learning & Change ()
  • Research Methods & Statistics
  • Social Psychology
Institute of Human Movement Science: 6 professorships
  • Physical Education and Sports Pedagogy
  • Human Movement and Training Science
  • Health Sciences
  • Culture, Media and Society
  • Sport and Exercise Medicine
  • Theory and Practice of Exercise fields
  • Institute of Psychology: 11 of 13 groups regularly conduct studies with human participants
  • Diverse participants groups: All age groups (including children), “special” groups (e.g., with congenital blindness, psychiatric disorders, etc.)
  • Diverse experimental settings: In-lab behavioral, groups, online, observational, MRI, EEG, fNIRS, etc.

Source: UHH | Baumann

Current participant databases

The status quo

At the Institute of Psychology …

  • 4 (of 11) groups have a participant database
    • mostly used for “special” participant groups (children, participants with blindness or psychiatric disorders, etc.)
    • paper- or Excel-based with limited access by a few group members
    • Developmental Psychology group receives contact details from the Resident’s Registration Office
    • various issues & concerns regarding the integration with Castellum (see discussion)
  • Everyone else: ad-hoc recruitment via SONA, Stellenwerk, Prolific (online studies only) or advertisement on campus

The goal

Excerpt from the Digital Strategy of the Faculty of Psychology and Human Movement Science (2022):

“We optimize the digital recruitment of study participants. We have access to a broad participant database or platform through which participants can be recruited according to specific criteria. We clarify the requirements for a platform for online studies, evaluate alternative systems and take care of the technical integration.”

Castellum at UHH

How it started …

  • New group: “We will need a participant database.”
  • Other groups: “Oh, we actually also need a participant database.”
  • Admin: “Great, this is part of our Digital Strategy, let’s do it!”

First steps

  • Query interest / needs / demands from all stakeholders
  • Understand current practices and existing solutions
  • Discussions in faculty meetings and university hallways
  • Initial consultations with data protection officer

Eventually: First meeting about Castellum in December 2022 ✨

Computer in Orange County offices, 1967 (CC BY 2.0)

How it’s going …

Castellum Task Force

  • 10 active members (8 scientific staff (4 PhDs, 3 PostDocs, 1 group leader), 2 IT staff)
  • On-going consultations with data protection officer
  • Meetings for discussion & exchange (hybrid, monthly)
  • Project website for documentation (see next slide)
  • Test installation of Castellum on UHH servers
  • Mailing list for announcements
  • Chat for detailed internal communication
  • Shared docs to prepare whitepaper, internal documentation, etc.

Tasks (non-exhaustive list)

  • Identified needs, concerns, expectations, …
  • Familiarized with Castellum using test installation
  • Distribute sub-tasks, collect and discuss insights
  • Create user agreement, prepare data protection whitepaper, etc.
  • Compliance with requirements by data protection officer
  • Finalize implementation of automated sign-ups, bulk-upload of existing databases

Project Website

https://lennartwittkuhn.com/castellum-uhh/ (in German only)
https://github.com/lnnrtwttkhn/castellum-uhh/

Task Areas

  1. Integration of existing databases
  2. Initial recruitment initiative
  3. Setting up Castellum
  4. Define roles & tasks of Castellum users
  5. Functionalities of Castellum
  6. Integration with external applications

Discussion

Challenges for the task force

  • Everyone understand how Castellum works and what it currently does (not) offer
    • Presentation and overview of Castellum with opportunity to ask questions
    • Collect resources in one central place (e.g., website)
    • Set-up a test-installation that is easy to access
  • Get all stakeholders on board and well-informed
    • “I have to discuss this with my group leader first.”
    • “I’ll ask around in my group and give you feedback next time.”
  • Diverse groups = diverse needs
    • “We will only use Castellum if we can easily recruit teams of participants.”
  • Castellum has to be significantly better than what a group is currently using
  • Diffusion of responsibility
  • Benefits of investing into a common resource
  • (Active) participation in the task force is an extra burden for (scientific, junior) staff

Example: Integration of existing participant databases and access

  • It took time and effort to build current participant database
  • Worries about free-riders
  • Worries that precious participants are going to be contacted too frequently
    • How can access to certain participant groups be reserved for certain research groups?
  • Worries about legal aspects and data-privacy (“Can we even share contact details from our existing database?”)
  • Unclear if participant consent allows transfer to Castellum
  • “We have a working solution. What’s our benefit of investing into Castellum?”

Summary

Next steps

  • Create user agreement, prepare data protection whitepaper, etc.
  • Compliance with requirements by data protection officer
  • Finalize implementation of automated sign-ups, bulk-upload of existing databases

Lessons learned (so far)

  • Involve data protection officer from the start
  • Inform all faculty members early and in detail
  • Have IT on board
  • Aim for implementation (or at least documentation) not (only) discussion

Thank you!

Castelllum MPIB

  • Castellum Team at MPIB
  • Tobias Bengfort & Karolina Mader

Castellum UHH

  • Castellum Task Force
  • Corinna Diercks (Data Protection Officer)
  • Aleksandra Pilpilides (Faculty Management)

Contact

Dr. Lennart Wittkuhn

lennart.wittkuhn@uni-hamburg.de
https://lennartwittkuhn.com/
GitHub Mastodon Twitter

Slides

đź’» Slides: https://lennartwittkuhn.com/castellum-uhh-presentation

Source: https://github.com/lnnrtwttkhn/castellum-uhh-presentation

📦 Software: Slides built with Quarto, GitHub Pages & GitHub Actions

đź’¬ Contact: I welcome any feedback via email or GitHub issues. Thank you!

Appendix

Task Areas

Integrating existing databases

  • Create overview of existing participants databases
  • Clarify requirements for transferring existing participant data between databases with data protection officer
  • Clarify how large existing datasets can be transferred to Castellum

Initial recruitment initiative

  • Create recommendations for a recruitment campaign (distribute flyers, place ads, etc.)
  • Outline costs of a recruitment campaign
  • Clarify privacy requirements for server to which new subjects will be directed to provide their basic information

Define participant characteristic in Castellum

  • Create overview of basic information to be collected from all participants
  • Create list of information that is relevant for specific studies (e.g. studies with children, fMRI, etc.)

Roles and tasks for Castellum users

  • Roles: Find out which roles will be necessary to maintain the database
  • Responsibilities: Determine areas of responsibility in Castellum (e.g., responsibility for data protection area)
  • Certification Establish rules for certification to work with Castellum
  • Maintenance: Establish rules for maintaining data in Castellum (e.g., collaborative maintenance by all users)
  • Manual: Create a manual for maintaining participant data in Castellum
  • Training: Draft a training program for Castellum train-the-trainer concept)
  • Communication: Clarify how Castellum users can exchange information with each other

Investigate functionalities of Castellum

  • Access: Clarify how access to specific groups of subjects can be restricted to user groups (e.g. ABs).
  • Minors: Clarify how to regulate access to data of minors in Castellum
  • Export: Clarify how subject data can be maintained and exported in Castellum in a code-based manner

Integration with external applications

  • Clarify how to link Castellum with external calendars
  • Clarify how Castellum can be linked with SONA
  • Create documentation on how to integrate external applications with Castellum
  • Clarify how to exclude participants who have already participated via another platform (e.g. SONA)

Castellum at University of Hamburg