Second Life survey

I think we gave up because our heads ache from banging them against titanium coated brick walls.

Des: To find bullying and harassment, one only has to stand in a newbie area such as Ahern's welcome center to find both and it doesn't even take that long.

As it turns out, real students take real college courses in social science subjects, and some of those courses have research assignments. The point of the research assignments is sometimes not to find the one definitive answer to a particular question, but to merely give the student practice in constructing survey questions and analyzing answers.

(Just like in grade school, the first time you were asked to write what you did over the summer, the idea was not for you to produce a work equivalent to "A Midsummer Night's Dream." The idea was to give you practice in constructing sentences out of with verbs and nouns, and to arrange those sentences into cohesive thoughts in paragraphs.)

I'll just go and put a NO to the first question then. End of survey. Analyse that!

Since I went for Art rather than: How does one grade this kind of thing? Otherwise, I'd assume that choosing the topic of the survey is just as important as the survey itself. Kinda.. bonus points if they actually did find something profound/useful for future study.

Also, if this is the case, shouldn't they also be rated/scored/graded on the level of professionalism of the survey?

Sorry, I'm curiosity's kitten at times.

I agree with Desmond that I would gladly take a few surveys, even if only one of them actually helped a struggling student. What really bothers me about the vast majority of these is that it doesn't look to me like the student is struggling very hard. The vast majority of the surveys we see are just garbage that the author has put no real work or research into. They want me to put out the effort of answering questions that they couldn't be bothered to properly write.

If someone is going to do a survey, they need a specific point they are going to address. They need to do some research beforehand, identify the people they are going to survey, and then CAREFULLY formulate their questions so that they get the right data. It takes real effort. I just don't see that kind of work in most of these surveys, and it makes me not want to help.

Nah, she/he is only 36 - not even over the hill yet.

Waterhead. Be sure you have voice enabled.

So here's the deal: I fill out surveys about *positive* things regarding SecondLife. Ask me about creativity, adventure, fantasy, education, making money (oops! covered that under "fantasy" ), but NO MORE of these goddamned surveys about "harrassment" or "violence" or whatever dreampt-up, trumped-up, media over-hyped, crazed-look-in-the-eye "research" topics!

If a student is learning how to conduct survey research, they can pick positive, community-building topics. Every social psych experiment is not a replay of Milgram or Zimbardo, and every survey doesn't have to be about whatever negative affect or behavior is the cause celebre du jour.

Nothing bad ever happens in SecondLife. Or if it does, I don't know about it. Or if I know about it, I'M NOT TELLING.

Correct - and because of that, the answer to the first question would be NO and the next two questions are totally Not Applicable. Since I doubt that those answers would be understood in the way they are intended, I'll opt to not answer at all.

I don't get out much I guess

And as far as harrassment goes, I ah... get my share of "unusual notecards."

But at some point, a guy gets to the age where it's not harrassment, but almost a kindness... sort of like when a young twenty-something lass calls the 80 year old on the park bench she sees every day 'sweetie' or 'hey sexy' as she jogs by...

I can't wait until this happens to me. I'm at that in-between age where the hot 20 somethings are totally unattracted to me, but I'm not old enough for them to call me "sweetie" or "sexy" yet without it being creepy. When I hit 80, I'm going to the park just so this sort of thing can happen.

Sassy remains puzzled...when she receives an unsolicited texture of the guys "equipment" from a random guy without even engaging in an exchange of mutual "Hi!", is that harrassment or excitement?

Depends on how good the texture is.

How often do 3 or 4 different guys give you the same picture?

I've been a student in several such classes over too many years of school. Usually, the topic itself isn't a big deal, as long as it's related to the subject matter of the course (the student is just supposed to choose something interesting to the student).

However, there are always bonus points for choosing a topic that relates to the paper or book that your professor is shopping around for publication.

The (legitimate) class surveys you see posted on these forums are probably for undergraduate classes (30 to 50 students or more), or maybe graduate classes (10 to 20 students maybe). They are not thesis or doctorate level research.

Professors aren't going to want to spend a lot of time grading them, and don't expect their students to have the time or resources to do something at a thesis or doctorate level. So I assume professors are just looking to see if the surveys reflect understanding of whatever research concepts the professor taught.

So, if you fill out a legitimate survey here, it really would be more along the lines of helping out a particular student with a class, rather than contributing to the great body of knowledge and research about a particular topic.

The only thing that bothers me about most of the surveys here is that they look like last-minute, sloppy jobs, without a lot of serious thought. I might be inclined to occasionally help out a student for a class answering one, but only if it looks to me like the student put some effort into constructing it. (The survey in the OP on this thread actually does look like serious effort was put into it.)

Edit: Actually, I should add, that the trick to getting an A for one of these research assignments comes in the section when you explain all the limitations in the particular research experiment you constructed, and how you would do it better for better results next time.

And whether their equipment matches.

mute and ignore. survey complete and problem solved.

These threads need to be ARable, or reportable, or deletable-because-they're-crab-able.

In fact, I now announce my official intent to click the "report abuse" link on any thread claiming to be survery/academic/research and asking specifically for dirt about SL. I am far beyond the point where I could be convinced that there is any possible legitimate excuse for anonymously digging for trouble. No "what if" or "maybe its a languae barrier" or any such nambypamby nonsense wil be entertianed - these people are trouble.

Who will join me? Let's make some noise.

For lack of a better fit I tagged it 'harassment' and suggested strongly that the OP seeks to cause trouble for SL.

But ... but... but I am running a survey about bald chewing gum dirty underwear in SL...

Note: More statistically significant data can be obtained by use of proper spelling, grammar, and syntax in survey questions.

I don't think he meant your survey, although you might be a bit of a troublemaker. Your survey has obvious scientific benefits.

Requests to fill out surveys do violate the topic guidelines of this forum.

Of course, about 75% of the threads in this forum violate the topic guidelines for this forum.

(Someone should to research how how close I am in my guess that 75% of the threads in this forum are off-topic. Then post the results in this forum. Which would be off-topic.)

Forum regulars tend to be as equally guilty as newbies when it comes to starting off-topic threads here in violation of the guidelines.

And by the way, every complaint about a survey thread posted within the survey thread just bumps the topic to the top, to give more exposure to the survey so that more people will be aware of it and complete it, to the benefit of the original poster.

You jest, but you probably come pretty close to the truth. Here's my theory...

These things aren't really surveys about SL. They're really survey-taking exercises. The instructions say to survey some online group (to get quick responses), and the example given is SL. The unimaginative ones don't bother picking a different target group.