<3 Please help me with my dissertation <3

[glitterbug212]

Hi guys

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/RRN9QRP

I am doing some research on Second life and Identity for my dissertation. I would really appreciate it if some of you could fill out the survey attached.

 

I need 50 people to answer and all of your answers will really help for me to get a better insight to SL.  Please don't be afraid to write loads if you can!  I love hearing peoples opinions and it will help me to get through this lengthly process of my degree.

 

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/RRN9QRP

Thanks x

[valerie Inshan]

Completed. Good luck for your project! :smileyhappy:

[Chosen Few]

Done and done.  Hope it helps.

[Drake1 Nightfire]

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glitterbug212 wrote:

I am doing some research on Second life and Identity for my dissertation.

I need 50 people to answer and all of your answers will really help for me to get a better insight to SL.

---

 

I refuse to help anyone that has been in SL for 5 months and has a blank profile.

Try spending some time in SL, talk to people inworld and make some friends.. experience it for yourself and then ask for help with a dissertation. If you want insight, immersion will give you great insight. Go to a few clubs and talk to people, you wont get a diverse group in the forums. most SLers dont even know they exist.

[glitterbug212]

Hi I totally can see where you are coming from.

 

I have tried to navigate my way around with great difficulty, I don't have as much time as I would like to get involved and really use SL at this present time as I am trying to get a degree, let me tell you final yr is no walk in the park.  So as much as I would really like to do what you say at this time its not gonna happen until I graduate.  So spare me a break please, IM trying my best.

[Freya Mokusei]

As someone who successfully completed their dissertation in SL without ever bothering anyone who wasn't already a friend of mine, I have to admit that your approach is lazy.

Your questions show a complete lack of insight about how SL works and why. The best example of which is asking whether peoples' careers differ between SL and RL. I mean, really, that's just... not knowing anything about the platform you're supposed to be researching.

There are plenty of books you can read about SL to be found on Amazon. I had to read about 5 of them to complete my own degree-level project, in addition to running my own SL business.

Yes, some users may well decide to help explain all of this to you. Others might actually reword your questions for you so that you can get some useful answers from your survey. But why should we?

[Orca Flotta]

You don't make no sense. You have no time to research SL while you're trying to write your dissertation about SL???

All questions in your survey are missing the point, they don't really touch most of us. Also you'll get many very diverse answers, so many different opinions and ways people are handling things in SL you won't be any wiser after reviewing the results.

Okay, I'll try to elaborate in the survey ...

 

 

[glitterbug212]

Thanks, I know im the first to admit I dont know enough about SL, I am trying to learn!  My whole diss is not on SL only a small section.  Any crtistism is constructive to me :-)

 

Thanks all for filling out!

[Myra Wildmist]

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Orca Flotta wrote:

You don't make no sense. You have no time to research SL while you're trying to write your dissertation about SL???

All questions in your survey are missing the point, they don't really touch most of us. Also you'll get many very diverse answers, so many different opinions and ways people are handling things in SL you won't be any wiser after reviewing the results.

Okay, I'll try to elaborate in the survey ...

 

 

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Sociology surveys often have little or nothing to do with the stated topic - in this case SL. For instance, glitter might be more interested in how people respond to the request to take a survey - e.g. this thread - and the survey is little more than a catylyst for discussion. Or glitter might not be interested in SL, at all, but more in what sort of people are part of online communities in general. 

It's not unusual for the intent or focus of a socioliogy project to be "misrepresented". For instance, if you want to test for prejudices among a particular demographic, such as do rich people hate poor people, you can't tell the test group what you're looking for and expect valid results.

I see these surveys in the SL forums occasionally. If this is a legit sociology project, I would expect to see a school association and the name of a professor in charge, or, at the least, contact info at the university. Though I only had one sociology class in school, it did focus on data gathering. Everything we did had the school's contact info on it and we were always required to identify ourselves.

Who is glitter? What's the school? How can we contact them? Who's the professor in charge of the project? As it is, this might be nothing more than someone gathering marketing information or worse, whatever worse is.

Without more complete information, such as glitter's school association and his/her own identity, I wouldn't take this survey.

I think people in SL are very generous with their time and would gladly take a legitimate academic survey. There's nothing to indicate this is one of them.

[Syo Emerald]

It could also be someone not knowing how to do it right. You should keep in mind how someone could see this, like "oh this is just a tiny forum about SL and I have just a harmless couple of questions". They might not think about others worrying about such sort of things.

 

@glitter

To the survey itself: I would suggest to improve some of the questions. When you ask how many hours someone spends in SL on a day, its difficult to answer, cause not everyone is online on each day. Also the job-question is a little....well let me say its easy to see that you wasn't much into SL. Just take a look on some jobs being common here: DJ, Dancer, Host, Model, Shopowner, Escort........ and what many jobs from the real world are missing here, cause nobody needs them.

[VRprofessor]

Basic research ethics requires informed consent which should include some information about your academic department and institution.  I've seen at least two studies running in world that had no difficulty with that.