Exploring and Improving the SIGCHI Volunteer Experience

The SIGCHI Volunteer Development Team invite you to take part in a research study of your volunteering activities. Please read the following information carefully.

SIGCHI is a volunteer led organization. Its volunteers take on unpaid roles in running SIGCHI, as well as organising and reviewing for SIGCHI's conferences, local SIGs, and other community activities. However, there is a recognition that volunteering is coming under huge demand pressure. The most visible stressor is that while SIGCHI’s conferences have experienced huge growth in submitted papers, the pool of reviewers is growing much more slowly. To enable peer-review stability at the current rate of growth and maintain the volume of other volunteer-led SIGCHI activities will require growing the pool of volunteers and making more effective use of the volunteer base. The SIGCHI Executive Committee has therefore decided to look closely at why and how volunteering is done to support it through better tools and processes. As well as trying to find out why people get involved with SIGCHI, its family of conferences, and the other activities that it sponsors, this also means understanding how we can support a wider diversity of skilled volunteers and increase access to roles by identifying barriers to volunteering. 

As a result, the SIGCHI Volunteer Development Team is undertaking a programme to understand, evolve, and support the volunteer experience. The purpose of this survey is to understand your motivations for volunteering, any problems you face in volunteering, and how we might be able to support you more effectively.

Please click here to access further participant information documentation and details on how to contact the researchers leading the survey if required. Feel free to ask us any questions!