Avatar Research

I am new resident in Second Life and a new researcher First Life. I'm interested in the similarities and differences in personality between real life and the SL Avatar. I've constructed a questionnaire for my research and you can participate by following this link:

http://www.questionpro.com/akira/TakeSurvey?id=876020

This questionnaire is anonymous, however, I'm offering a drawing of L$ 5,000 for participation. In order to be entered into the drawing you will need to provide your Second Life Avatar's name (for the purposes of the drawing only).

If you have any questions, feel free to reply to this post, PM me here on the forums or IM me in world.

Thanks for your time.

Garrett Pienaar

A very well designed survey, and well thought out. I hope you publish the results of the survey too - it looks very interesting.

Totally good job on the survey.... I know I filled it out. (^_^)y

I nearly always do these surveys that are mentioned on the forums. Thought this was one of the best thought out I'd seen. One comment, on the first of the multiple choice question pages it could have been made clearer that you were going to ask the same questions about the RL person and then about the AV. I wasn't clear about this until I got to the page of AV questions.

I wasn't sure how to answer some questions. For instance I am quite assertive but hardly aggressive at all.

i took it and found myself putting different things down for my RL than as my avatar.. but i was honest so we shall see if i need to go to the loonybin.. LOL..

hey this is SL so we get to be someone we might not otherwise be.. right ????

My first survey, cant wait to see these results.

Enjoyed the survey except for the questions that indicate that you may believe SL to be a game.

SL is a platform, a medium. It is possible to play games in SL, that doesn't make SL a game.
~Cali

It was an interesting survey, but I second what Caliandris said. I'm not playing SL. Nor do I view my avatar as a game character or separate entity. I kept trying to recall what answers I put down in the first section to be sure those in the second roughly duplicated them (except that my avatar is more conservative looking and I act more conservatively inworld than in my first life, because I only unexpectedly run into clients in SL).

My first draft was based on MMORPGs, which are games afterall. I thought I had changed all of the language in this questionnaire to reflect SL for what it is (an online "platform" or "world." I'm used to playing "games" so it is taking me a bit to wrap my head around SL and the language that comes with it.

Thanks for the comments and participation everyone!

didnt finish it. page kept going back to where I had been I gave up,, As usual.

so it was supposed to do that. oh well who cares

Thanks to everyone who has already taken my questionnaire. Please, tell your friends, I could use many more responders.

Please Note:

The deadline for eligibility for the drawing of L$ 5,000 is Friday, April 4th. I will draw a name randomly over the weekend and contact the winner.

Don't let this stop you from taking the questionnaire though!

Thanks again to everyone who has participated. I couldn't have done it without you.

Garrett

done it. 5044178

is this over the weekend already?

Thanks to everyone who participated. Our winning participant is....


*drumroll*


Eddie Hagoromo!

I will be in contact with you via PM shortly.

Thanks again everyone for your help. I'll post results to my class research project when I've done the final analysis. In the mean time, if you're interested in this kind of research or curious to see where I may be headed with my own research, I suggest you check out this site:

http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/

-Garrett

Update:

I received an A in my research course for this project (yay!)

Some basic findings from the research:

1. A person's perception of him-/herself is positively correlated with his/her perception of his/her avatar (not a big finding). People tend to create avatars that are relatively similar to themselves in appearance or personality, though this is a tendency, not a norm.

2. Correlations were found between a person's game play motivation (i.e. what interests them about online games/communities and why they play/participate) and their perception of their avatar, though specific information could not be concluded as the power of the study was small.

3. (Not surprisingly) Social, explorative and immersive motivations were among the commonly listed motivations for residents of Second Life. This states that residents partake in Second Life primarily to build relationships, socialize, explore and immerse themselves (either by taking on the persona of their avatar or escaping real life stressors).

Thank you all so much for your help. If I have another study in the future I'll be sure to post it for more input.

Garrett