participants for interviews needed

[Scylla Rhiadra]

41 minutes ago, sirhc DeSantis said:

Will have to decline as the use of Teams would reveal my true identity as being Brenda Rodley, Her Grace the Dowager Duchess of Quirm

Oh, forgot to add.

Yeah, this is going to be a deal breaker for some. Even for those who are not actually the Dowager Duchess of Quirm.

[Love Zhaoying]

4 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Oh, forgot to add.

Yeah, this is going to be a deal breaker for some. Even for those who are not actually the Dowager Duchess of Quirm.

Plus, getting paid 8 Euros (sorry, dunno the symbol) in RL money means giving some RL contact info even if for PayPal, etc.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

Just now, Love Zhaoying said:

Plus, getting paid 8 Euros (sorry, dunno the symbol) in RL money means giving some RL contact info even if for PayPal, etc.

Yep, good point.

[Arielle Popstar]

3 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Plus, getting paid 8 Euros (sorry, dunno the symbol) in RL money means giving some RL contact info even if for PayPal, etc.

Doesn't that already happen by using Microsoft Teams?

[Love Zhaoying]

16 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Doesn't that already happen by using Microsoft Teams?

Not necessarily. Teams uses email, sure. But AFAIK It's not connected to anything "personal" like PayPal, I believe you could use a "made up today" email for Teams.

Forget Teams for a minute: if it were one of the older "voice / texting apps" would you have the same concern? (Whatever we used in the old days, after AIM but before Microsoft Messenger/Zoom/Teams.) I wouldn't have a problem with AIM back in the day. (Can't remember the voice app after that.)

ETA: Skype, that's one of them!

Edited January 5 by Love Zhaoying

[Marianne Little]

Payment in Amazon vouchers?

Can I use them without paying shipping to Europe, custom duties, tax and VAT... 🙄

[Ceka Cianci]

I shop to curb my addiction to shopping.

[GuliaMCR]

Again, sorry for posting this announcement here. I did not expect to receive so much negative feedback, but I cannot delete this topic anymore. I will not recruit any participants from this platform due to such high concern about data privacy.

But to answer some of your questions (in order not to be disrespectful) - I used SL for some time (just like some other platforms), but I am not an active user. I am researching the participants of several social virtual worlds and posting this announcement on different platforms. So, I am not studying only the SL virtual consumption, but the virtual consumption overall. My PhD program is 5 years program and I am doing a thesis on different subtopics of virtual consumption as well as using different techniques. All the insights collected via interviews are qualitative data and are used only for insights only. I did not share the full description of the research, because, from my previous experience, it could be overwhelming, so I share it in a private message. Amazon vouchers you can buy in any country (where Amazon exists) and send them via email as a link, so no privacy data is violated.

Again, I did not want to hurt anyone's feelings or create negativity. Thank you.

[Ceka Cianci]

Don't mind me, I was just being honest.. Shopping in SL does curb my urge to go shopping in the RL, Some anyways.. hehehe

[Gabriele Graves]

I don't have virtual consumption, it's just a cough I tell you.

[Arielle Popstar]

8 minutes ago, GuliaMCR said:

Again, sorry for posting this announcement here. I did not expect to receive so much negative feedback, but I cannot delete this topic anymore. I will not recruit any participants from this platform due to such high concern about data privacy.

Oh pay no mind, this thread went remarkably well with some expected heckling which might be true for the one's posting their privacy concerns whereas plenty of others who have no real issue about it. I'd continue on your path ignoring the negative bits.

[Luna Bliss]

You can buy cookies at Amazon now.

[Persephone Emerald]

54 minutes ago, GuliaMCR said:

Again, sorry for posting this announcement here. I did not expect to receive so much negative feedback, but I cannot delete this topic anymore. I will not recruit any participants from this platform due to such high concern about data privacy.

But to answer some of your questions (in order not to be disrespectful) - I used SL for some time (just like some other platforms), but I am not an active user. I am researching the participants of several social virtual worlds and posting this announcement on different platforms. So, I am not studying only the SL virtual consumption, but the virtual consumption overall. My PhD program is 5 years program and I am doing a thesis on different subtopics of virtual consumption as well as using different techniques. All the insights collected via interviews are qualitative data and are used only for insights only. I did not share the full description of the research, because, from my previous experience, it could be overwhelming, so I share it in a private message. Amazon vouchers you can buy in any country (where Amazon exists) and send them via email as a link, so no privacy data is violated.

Again, I did not want to hurt anyone's feelings or create negativity. Thank you.

Don't take this negative feedback too seriously.  People are bored for some drama.

[Love Zhaoying]

1 minute ago, Persephone Emerald said:

Don't take this negative feedback too seriously.  People are bored for some drama.

^^ Yes, one can only argue about PBR so much.

[Rolig Loon]

1 hour ago, GuliaMCR said:

Again, sorry for posting this announcement here. I did not expect to receive so much negative feedback, but I cannot delete this topic anymore. I will not recruit any participants from this platform due to such high concern about data privacy.

You give up too easily, I think. For what I remember from your thread a year ago and see here, you seem to be doing a well-monitored broad-based bit of research.  It can't be easy, and I am sure you have been encountering many versions of the skepticism you see here -- some of it unkind. That's the way research in the social sciences goes. I advise you to stick with the plan but not use this forum as a way to find participants. As others have pointed out, this is a very small, unrepresentative subset of SL residents.  It will be harder to identify interviewees in world, but it's the right thing to do. 

Good luck.

[animats]

4 hours ago, JUSTUS Palianta said:

The best way to learn about SL people is to live some SL. ... SL people are just tired of being used to write papers on, like we are rats in a cage. 

Yes. The comment I usually make on this is to set up a little office in Second Life and do interviews there. Rent a space in someplace popular for a month. London City has space. Put in some office furniture and informational displays, put up a sign with office hours, and see who wanders in. You can probably do the whole job for under US$50. Maybe try four locations for a week each over the course of a month -  a new user region such as London City, a shopping region, a roleplay region, and maybe an adult region. This isn't one homogeneous game. It's an area about the size of Los Angeles, and most activity is local.

If you have an in-world presence, people will take you seriously.  Go to busy clubs and and stores, and hand out invites to be interviewed. Offer people L$100 just to show up. That's about US$0.40, and that's enough to get people in the door. Give them a T-shirt if they do the interview. (How to make custom T-shirts.)

These forums are not read by many users. Mostly creators, developers, and landlords are on here. This person seems to want consumers, so they need to go to shopping events.

[Persephone Emerald]

53 minutes ago, animats said:

[snip]

These forums are not read by many users. Mostly creators, developers, and landlords are on here. This person seems to want consumers, so they need to go to shopping events.

Do you not see all the fashion and photo posts on here? Some of us (not me) are huge consumers. We're buying clothes, skin, mesh bodies & heads, hair, houses and furniture. We've even got a recent thread about which vehicles are best for driving in SL.

[Paul Hexem]

6 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Huh?

"You're my pilot? Which certifications do you have?"

"I've got plenty of certifications!"

[Scylla Rhiadra]

2 minutes ago, Paul Hexem said:

"You're my pilot? Which certifications do you have?"

"I've got plenty of certifications!"

Anyone who is engaged in PhD work has, at the least, an honours BA or BSc, and quite probably a Masters degree as well. Again, I don't know the programs where she is, but in North America, if she's engaged in the research now, she'll have completed two years of what we here call "residence," which involves course work and preparation for, as well as completion of, one or two comprehensive exams and a special field exam (generally including a viva or oral examination). Her proposal will have had to have been passed by both her supervisor and the relevant graduate studies director and/or committee, and she'll have produced, as I noted above, a research plan also vetted by her supervisor.

And of course, just getting into a PhD program isn't easy: only a small proportion of applications are approved for admittance.

As regards privacy concerns, any research involving human subjects -- including "virtual ones" -- will have to pass through an ethics review board of some sort, either at the faculty or institutional level. No proposal that doesn't include privacy safeguards for the subjects of interviews or surveys would pass, nor would information that violated those safeguards ever make it into a published dissertation: no examining committee would allow it.

I'm not sure what you want, Paul. A copy of her transcripts and her GPA?

[Zalificent Corvinus]

10 hours ago, Sam Bellisserian said:

Don't be discouraged. Most of the posters like to heckle people for things that they'd never NO sane person would EVER think of doing anyway. 

Fixed that for you.

[xXSuicidalIdolXx Candycane]

right on, message had been sent

[Kathlen Onyx]

2 hours ago, Zalificent Corvinus said:

Fixed that for you.

Aw, it's interesting  how you continue to think that your constant disapproval of everyone on this forum including Linden Labs is "cute" and "entertaining". It isn't.

[Zalificent Corvinus]

2 hours ago, Sam Bellisserian said:

Aw, it's interesting  how you continue to think that your constant disapproval of everyone on this forum including Linden Labs is "cute" and "entertaining". It isn't.

Aw, it's interesting  how you continue to think that your constant carping at anyone on this forum who doesn't guzzle Positivity Cult Coolaid is "something anyone should care about" It isn't.

 

People push back against the "I'm an academia wannabe, with a desire to make the SL Lab Rats jump through hoops for my poorly thought out thesis" threads, because they are sick and tired of "outsiders" treating them like "lab rats".

Stuff nobody would think of such as "how does your SL shopping influence your RL shopping", to which the instant reply is almost certainly "it doesn't".

Ooops, academic thesis shot down in flames, try again next year with some slightly different but equally inane idea. Apparently this year's idea is SO inane they don't even want to tell us what they were trying to prove with their "research".

They are offering to pay for interviews, 8 euronotes a go, but enough interviews to be statistically meaningful at that price, will cost them a couple of thousand at least. That's a lot of financial outlay to "prove" some idea so off the wall, that they are unwilling to divulge it for fear of being laughed at.

 

[InnerCity Elf]

An interview about SL things, as my avatar, under my SL username, in Typonese not in voice,  conducted within some office that the interviewer set up in SL themselves, or even a coffee shop on a nice sim they came across during their in-world research, and paid in Linden$?

Yes! I'd surely consider that if somewhat within my usual online times, not for the L$, but for the fun and novelty of it. And yes, I'd either answer truthfully, or with "no comment"s on things I'd really not like to speak of.

But if it's not worth that effort, and if my replies as my SL self implicately are considered dishonest, or not worth spending research time and money on vs. those same replies I'd give as my official RL self, I have to pass.

Wishing you good luck, though, if people want to participate, that's completely fine, of course. If you find people who are happy enough with the conditions in-world, be aware that it might skew your results, depending on what you're researching about, but that would probably be so anyhow, in-world or through forum, unless you're going for, and can get to participate, a really big and varied enough group of sample subjects.

What I can disclose, however, is that, alas, the High Tari of the Elves will no more than the Dowager Duchess disclose and thus admit to having a shoe addiction. 

May your paths be golden.

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

17 hours ago, GuliaMCR said:

Microsoft teams). I will pay 8 Euros/9 Dollars in Amazon vouchers for participation

I hope you'll mention in the Discussion section of your final publication that the population selection for this survey is subject to potential Microsoft Teams and Amazon bias. And to promise that, in future studies, you'll include alternative modes of communiation, like Zoom, Discord and Skype and rewards  by other means. You know, just to keep the peer reviewers happy.

[Edit] Even more importantly: I'm pretty sure a substantial portion of SL residents is not at all comfortable using voice and/or video communications. So you're Zoom requirements are going to severely skew your findings. Seriously. Better give that a good long thought.

Edited January 5 by Arduenn Schwartzman