Designing and Evaluating Serious Games for Cost- Effective Data Acquisition in Genomics Research

Abstract: Scientists interested in uncovering associations between DNA variants and complex traits such as personality characteristics and cognitive abilities often face the constraint that the research requires very large samples to be successful. One reason very large samples are difficult to assemble is that the outcome variables are not always measured in a consistent way in different data sets, and sometimes they are not measured at all. In such cases, traditional measurement techniques (such as in-house interviews or surveys) are not always feasible. In this project, I sought to develop two “serious games” which can be used to measure short-term memory. The study shows that an individual’s performance in both of these games is moderately predictive of measures of short-term memory used by psychologists. The study also finds that users rate the serious games as more enjoyable than the conventional measures. The results suggest that ongoing effort to gather outcome data via nonstandard techniques such Mobile apps may turn out to be a useful complement to conventional approaches toward data collection.