Sociability in S.L - A questionnaire to spend 3min pls

Hello All,

as part of my research for my Masters dissertation "Sociability in S.L" there is a questionnaire which i would like to make it available to everyone.

Please spend few minutes and send it back to me pls

I will really appreciate. just copy and paste the following into inventory / notecard /fill it and send it to me

Second Life Avater : MrSociability Albatros

Please free to fill my questionnaire...

Gender:
Age:

How long have you been a member in S.L:

Topics of interest within S.L:

Membership type:


1. Why would you recommend online users to join S.L communities?





2. Have you found any of the communities that you have experienced from the title and content so far, that effectively helped you to find what you were looking for?





3. Have you clearly explained the rules and policies before you join any of the communities? Have you ever seen a moderator guide and enforced rules?




4. What kind of support you do get when you login for the first time?




5. Have you been able to do what ever you wish to or were there any restrictions?




6. What are the regular communications needs in a community? How easy did you find to express your self?




7. Do you think you have enough protection to discuss confidential information within the SL?


8. What makes you return on a regular basis to S.L?



9. Reflect what happens in real life that doesn’t happen in second life and the opposite.



10 . Why would you condider to change RL money for Linden money / buy land?



Thanks a lot for your effort!!!

Dear MrSociability,

You'll probably not get many takers. The forum members have seen, too often, marketing or phishing attempts, thinly disguised as "research projects". But I'll bite...well, nibble.

Gender: Not germane to your study.
Age: Not germane to your study.
Member since: May 2007
Membership type: Premium. Concierge level.
Topics of Interest: Building, business, sailing, SL photography, social activities, classes

1. To find a group that has interests in common with yours. To get news and information about events and products that interest you.

2. Yes.

3. Yes. Yes.

4. Almost none. After I left Orientation Island, I was befriended by a helpful Resident, who took me to a freebie place and helped me get started.

5. There are some restrictions. Most of them have to do with things that don't interest me (gambling, age play). A few are irritating (ban lines, blocked waterways).

6. Second Life is the best online medium I've found to express yourself, because it offers such a variety of communication methods, from chat to IM to animations and facial expression.

7. No.

8. Friends, personal satisfaction, and challenge.

9. Real life supports senses that SL doesn't. Touch, smell, taste. On the other hand, SL features a wider community of people than you can easily meet in real life, plus flying, teleportation and instant creation of nearly anything you can imagine. In addition, luxuries that are out of reach in Real Life can be easily purchased in SL.

10. For fun, or for investment, or both.

An additional reply...

I think your questionnaire is rather poorly worded to collect information on "sociability in SL."

In addition, you can probably collect a lot more purely statistical data by simply researching groups. I would sort them into categories, such as

Groups that support a store or product
Groups that support a club
Groups that are tenants organizations
Special interest groups

The first two are not, in essence, islands of "sociability". They're a means for the store or club owner to advertise to a targeted audience.

The third also has a non-social primary purpose, to inform and keep track of tenants, whether it's a single apartment building or a fifty-region island empire. However, they can also serve a social purpose. My former Residents Association group would send out notices of upcoming events at clubs in the island chain.

The fourth covers a wide area of special interests, from sailing to philosophy to kinky sexual practices. The common factor is that they are intended to support their members, not a single merchant. It's this category of groups that you should concentrate your efforts on. Look for numbers of members, whether they are open or closed, whether they charge a fee or not, whether they are active or not, how long they have been in existence, and (possibly) ask the members whether the group satisfies their needs.

Just one researcher to another.

For clubs, this only applies if the club owner treats their place as a business. Not all do - for some, a club is a way to provide a place for liked-minded people to be..

Right, Meade, there's a lot of overlap. The Forum Hangout is a prime example. But in those cases, the group came first, THEN the club, and it's members-owned and supported.

I was referring to the "other" kind of clubs, where the club goes up first, and tries to attract group members as a way of attracting business.

Not sure I totally agree with that but close enough.

Sorry. Not feeling very sociable today.

No sure what most of your questions have to do with sociability or how this hodgepodge will help you create a meaningful dissertation.




I don't even know what that means. Does grammar count in your project?

Sounds like a good topic, but an inappropriate research methodology, if you don't mind me saying so. Have you thought about using ethnographic methods? Live in SL for a while, and observe what people do, learn their 'language', understand what is going on, and talk to people. SL conveniently will enable you to record all the discussion, but have a care for the issue of confidentiality. (Consult your supervisor about this - I'm not sure what research ethics would apply in SL). A Masters dissertation should give you enough time to make a decent attempt at this. Unless you're running badly late and you need a rush job? In that case get in the field without delay!

On the other hand, maybe the questionnaire is not quite what it seems, but a subtle way of stimulating responses of a study of sociability among forum readers? Hmm, clever. It worked with me.

The problems of carrying out research about communities somewhat alien to the researcher are long established, and without care can cause unintended offense or misleading results. This especially applies to the social patterns which seem most familiar.

Good luck.

(PS - edit - you might find it helful to put a little information about yourself on your SL profile - you are asking people to send you information about themselves, but you say virtually nothing, which feels wrong).

I would guess from reading this that he is an ESL speaker.

MrSociability Albatros,

Please refrain from the use of loaded and vauge questions. Your committee will throw many of these questions out. For simplicity, why not use a likert scale. You can collapse or expand the scale to meet your needs.

Are you attempting a qualitative analysis?
This platform (forums) and your methodolgy will only give you crap data.

Please PM me for quick deconstruction of your method and questionnaire.



Muah,
Jezabell B

Hmmm, good point and you're probably right.
But also important to clearly phrase questions if you are collecting data in an English-speaking environment. Like Jezabell mentioned, some of this is vague and won't likely result in meaningful outcomes.

English is my second language, too. Perhaps *I* am mistaken by the meaning of "sociability"?
What does Lindens, finding info, rules and policies have to do with sociability? Or is that word, in itself, used wrongly here?

It occurs to me that an excellent text anonymizer would be to run it back and forth through machine translation an even number of times. (Just a tangential observation from the paranoid section.)

I never would have thought that English wasn't your first language.

I would guess that the good researcher doesn't know quite enough about SL to know what questions he needs to ask.

OK, I'll partially bite.

Gender and age: I decline to answer questions about RL

SL member approximately one year (signed on Nov. '06, not active until mid-Jan. '07)

"Topics of interest" - For in-world SL, in particular, anti-griefing, the SL forums, building - but much else besides; this list is not all-inclusive.

membership type - basic account

Point of interest: I have some difficulty with the term "community" as used here. Not clear what you mean. Does it require official group membership? Must the members even know each other? Are categories like "landowners" or "griefers" who may have common interests but no common association considered "communities?" "Community" needs better definition.

That said:

1. "Communities" in the sense of associations that allow or encourage exchanges of communication or information among people in them are useful for all the same reasons they are useful in RL.

2. Yes.

3. I always look for "rules" and the like first. Only moderator I have encountered has been in the SL forums, where a moderator has proved very useful to have.

4. Peculiar question. Answer as asked: None.

5. In SL as a whole, yes. In particular formal groups, I have encountered some limitations that have not proved burdensome to me.

6. Group chat or IM chat are necessary in SL, plus ordinary chat or audio contact when individuals are nearby. On the SL forums, ability to type.

7. No. And anybody who does think so I consider to be at risk. But this is a problem common to much of the Internet.

8. I think SL is a harbinger of the future of the Internet and I want to take part in it for that reason.

9. Beyond the obvious differences like flight, tp, godlike creation of prim objects and the like in SL, I do not understand this question or how to answer it.

10. I chose to experience SL as a poor immigrant, like many who came to my country, starting with almost nothing, so I have not and do not intend to convert RL money into L$. I have no objection to doing so; I do not merely because of the choice I have made. Changing money is a perfectly sensible thing for people to do.

Huh? These questions don't make much sense in terms of what you say you are trying to do. I think, quite honestly, you'd have better luck just going in-world and talking to people if this is in fact legit.

I met a great university student a few days ago who was full of questions......I was more than happy to help her out because it was very obvious she was enthusiastic and curious about the social dynamics of SL. But, something posted in here I wouldn't be bothered with. *shrug* (haha, I'm a loner in SL most of the time anyway lol)

I'm anti-social.. does that count?

No excuse really. If you insist on writing your thesis in English, you have to be able to cope with both methodological problems as well as the language itself.
I'm not a native speaker either....but I teach ESL and get a lot of people who want to write their theses in English to make them more international...and a lot of them just don't have the appropriate abilities.
Oh, and I'm prolly anti-social, too...

I was speaking merely of his grammar and syntax. No judgment upon his methods, I will leave that to the experts.

I've done surveys in my own area, linguistics, and it looks fishy to me...

But I'm mostly worried about language use, too. Who'd have guessed.

Euh... OK
I just figured out what ESL means, lol
Until Alyx posted, I thought it had something to do with SL.
(Extreme Second Life speaker? WTH?)