Extremely Short Survey...

Dear SLers,
We are 4 graduate students at IIT in Chicago, doing research on Commons-based Peer Production platforms like Second Life. You would do us a great favor if you could fill out the Extremely Short Survey listed below. It should take less than a minute or two. Thanks for your help.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=VzVFLFMh4LE8yH7O1_2bLfJg_3d_3d

Vince LaConte
Jared Lavey
Nikhil Mathew
Thom van der Doef

Lols and sighs

It is very short and no gross spelling or grammar errors and it did not ask for any personal info, so I was going to do it........

but then I got stuck on question 2. I ranked my number 1 and number 2 choices and all the rest tied for last or N/A, but there was no way to indicate that. It might have been better if the items in number 2 had been given an answer type like number 3.

FYI - not sure how you meant "contributor" on number 1. I do not create anything, but since I spend tons of money buying stuff, I consider myself a very large contributor.

Sorry, I am not a...


to be studied by some...

Nice and short.

The ranking part is a bit confusing, because it deletes previous choices if you select the same rank further down.

Some kind of intelligence and patience test for your lab rats?

Yep: short and relatively painless.

Not sure it's going to work quite as intended, at least for Second Life. Seems pretty obvious to me that question 4 is trying to establish a covariate dimension, something like "the more a resident trusts the information in a platform, the more they <something>," where <something> might be "feel personally committed to the platform." (If instead it were trying to measure "trust" as a standalone construct, it would have been another ranking question, putting Second Life in some order with other information sources.)

But in Second Life, almost all the content is provided by residents. And there have been spectacular scams and abuses. It's possible that there's been a selection process at work, such that those with the highest level of <something> remain in the population despite knowing enough not to trust much of anything they see in-world. So there could well be a correlation in the opposite direction of what one might expect, or find in other virtual worlds.

It would be interesting to see the results and interpretation. Not that we ever do. Survey participation is as near to "write-only memory" as makes no difference, which is kind of a shame.

QFT

We hear of LL statistics and we see our own polls but in two years of filling in surveys for 'outsiders' I've never known of any results feedback.

I rarely do surveys asked for here, but I did take a look at the questions.

IMO many questionnaires that I see (I also do them for the UK based YouGov opinion polling site) fall down by being less precise than they could be, in that they often don't qualify or define some of the terms used in questions.

That means the answers may, but probably won't, measure what was intended, because the responders will all have their made their own interpretations, and the conclusions will be skewed.

For instance, in this one:
Q3 - What "information" was meant? Help and support pages? Info given by Lindens, or from other residents? Information in the general media?

I might be being dense on a Monday morning but I wasn't sure what exactly was being asked.

--
Aes

I also would like to see the results of this short survey...

My usual answer...

"Similarly, some of the first educators and researchers in SL were a bit clumsy in their approach. There were early incidents in which Residents felt—rightly—that they were being spied upon or treated like guinea pigs rather than human beings. Imagine how you would feel if an entire class of students set up right next to your vacation hideaway, left trash lying around, logged your conversations, and posted them on the Internet with criticism and mean-spirited comments. This is exactly what happened to some early Residents. Things have improved greatly in the years since then, but sometimes SL Residents are still subject to that kind of inconsiderate behavior. For example, a constant stream of researchers (often students) posts on the Second Life official forums requesting that Residents please take their surveys. Most of these surveys include the same questions that have been asked over and over. Often they aren't spell-checked, or refer to SL as a game—a sure way to irritate a substantial number of Residents. Some Residents make a hobby of critiquing these surveys, pointing out how the questions and their wording make it clear that the researcher isn't familiar with Second Life. Some post outright that they are sick of badly planned surveys and suggest that the researchers log in and do their own research."

From The Second Life Grid: The Official Guide to Communication, Collaboration, and Community Engagement
by Kimberly Rufer-Bach
ISBN-13: 9780470412916

MY extremely short answer (to the OP): no.

Wow

Haha! I didn't notice that.

Wowza - got me too!

Heh. It does rather highlight the fact that our intrepid OP still has a total of one post in these forums after eight months, so I think we can safely assume the report of results won't be forthcoming.

Makes me so eager to participate in the next Big Science survey, don't ya know?

I've seen some results now and then.

"Commons based Peer Production Platform". I like that. Now I know what to say in the next, "What is SL?" thread. That alone was worth the necro.

But do I WANT to produce peers? At the moment, I stand alone at the peak of human perfection. I'm not sure I need company.