Voices across Birmingham - Conditions

Who can take part?

To take part you must have been born in the Birmingham area and you must currently live in this area.

Registration

To take part in the project you need to register.  You can do this using our online registration form, or by calling our registration freephone number 08000 789384, or by texting VOICES to 07765 972 212. Within 24 hours of registration we will contact you to give you a PIN number.  This number will identify you to the system and enable us to pay you for the calls that you make.  We will also remind you of the rules below.

Your PIN number

Your PIN number identifies you to the system.  When you make a phone call through our system you will be asked to enter your PIN number using the phone dialling buttons.  Please take care when you do this – if you enter an incorrect PIN number we will not know that you made the call and we will be unable to pay you for that call.

Payments

We can pay you by cheque (we will just need your name and address) or by electronic banking (in this case we will need your bank details).

How many calls can I make and how much will I be paid?

To understand how people talk in the city, we need calls from as many people as possible, and so you are limited to a total of up to one hour per person.  You can make a small number of long calls or a larger number of short calls – it’s up to you.  We will pay you 50p per minute – that’s £5 for a 10 minute call or £7.50 for a 15 minute call, or £30 for a 1 hour call.  In addition, if you complete 1 hour of calls we will pay an additional £5 bonus.  So, the total payment if you make a total of 1 hour of calls will be £35.  We will pay you once you have made an hour of recordings or when you tell us that you no longer wish to take part in the project.

What will happen to the recordings?

The calls will be recorded and stored anonymously on a computer – the caller will be identified only by the PIN number and no personal details will be included.  Each call will be transcribed – a person will listen to the recording and type exactly what is said.  The recordings plus the transcriptions will be used by researchers in universities and companies to develop better computer systems that can recognise human speech.

Permission

We need to have permission from you and the person that you call to record your conversation.  By using the system you are giving us permission to record your part of the conversation.  At the start of the call you MUST confirm that the person you have called gives permission for his or her part of the conversation to be recorded.  If this permission is not obtained then we will have to delete the recording and you will not be paid for that recording.

Call content

There are no restrictions on what you can say – we want to record you talking naturally.  Obviously we will not pay for a call which contains mostly silence

 

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