Help Wanted: Survey for academic research study at James Cook University Australia

Hey everyone,

I’m a PhD (research) student who is doing research about virtual worlds and I need/want to collect some data through a survey. I would greatly appreciate your assistance if you can spare the time.

It's 188 questions but nearly all of them are multiple-choice, which takes 25 to 30 min to finish.

Here is the URL for the survey
https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/Virtual-Worlds
Thank you.

 

This should be under the "Non-Arkadian Stuff" section, either in the off-topic or EU folder.

I do not want to disregard your honest intent. But 7 or 8 pages into the survey, I have no idea what to do with most of the questions. Not all, but too many of them have no relation or relevance to what people are doing in there and why. Hence I won't complete it since it would be unfair to tick almost everything off with "neutral" and ask your money for useless results anyway. It appears to me as if not much knowledge about virtual worlds, if any at all, went into the setup of this survey. Besides, Second Life is a different beast altogether, essentially a 3D version of the www since all content is user created.

How about setting up an account, getting a mentor, getting your toes wet and trying this again next year? It probably won't be necessary in the same form, as you will have met a lot of different characters.

Salam

 

Hi San,

Thank you for your comment and explantion.

I haven't notice where is the "Non-Arkadian Stuff". so I though this might be the best place to post this.

We are not looking at Second Life and Entropi Universe as they are the same, we know they are totally different but what is comment that both of them have their own virtual economy and virtual currency, so we are looking at the economic part of it and how the users look at this economic part from different reason.

I already have an account, but I know very familiar with everything yet, it take time to get the experience needed to get familiar with the different game aspects.

Thank you.

 

I took the survey, is a legit offer.

 

Indeed it is. Hope the information will be of use.

 

Thanks Murkalael for your help. It is really very useful for me. Very much appreciated

 

Hi Lightz,

Indeed it will be used, you saw how long was the survey & how long it took from me to finish it.

You offer a great help by participating in this survey. You help is really very useful, Thank you

 

Want to confirm that this is legit. The survey took me under 30 minutes and shortly there after the $4.50 was in my paypal account (minus transaction fee?).

I was a little skeptical when early on it states you'll need to give your account username as verification. Nowhere is my account name linked with my avatar name so I wasn't willing to share that if it came to it (was afraid it was a phishing scam). Seems it was a misunderstanding on my part on what he was asking for; he only asks for your avatar name and your email address. I believe he sent the funds based on my email address, which luckily was the same one linked to my paypal account.

I was rather disappointed in some of the questions being asked; I personally thought they were not well formulated questions for Entropia Universe. I answered them all but I don't know how relevant some of the data will be, and the problem lies in asking questions across three very different MMO's, World of Warcraft, Second Life and Entropia Universe. If you are looking at World of Warcraft, it has a giant user base that pays a monthly fee and some people may buy stuff to get an advantage. Entropia Universe, a small user base where everyone is playing with a currency that can be converted to cash. Second Life (my in limited experience) is trying to be a 3D world simulation platform where you can do just about anything virtually, I suspect it has a small player base.

Example, when you ask questions of whether I'm in the game for entertainment reasons, or several other reasons that include religion, education, etc. I think you are asking about Second Life. There were a lot of questions that basically revolved around the ethics of buying something in a game with real currency; I suspect in World of Warcraft some buy things to get ahead, etc. Questions going down the path of do you think that is ethical, do you think your friends think it is fair, is it fair if someone was hacked or they work to buy items so to get caught up in the game, etc. None of that makes sense in Entropia, where all game currency, items and skills are translatable back to US dollars.

Take home message though was I tried to answer the best I could, didn't necessarily think all of the multiple choice options really fit with the answer I would want to give, but I'm always curious and interested in game research and want to encourage it.

 

Dear Ryloth,

Thank you so much for the your detailed reply. First regarding the 0.50 paypal transaction fees, I'm willing to pay the different, I'm willing to pay a full 5.00 USD.

We don't want to collect any personal information at all, even though you provide it we will not add it to the questions. I use the avatar name to search in EU that the user is exist, and I use the email to send the paypal money because there is no any other easy way.

User can ignore to provide the email but it mean they will not get any prizes. So all these data is going to be deleted anyway. I'm just trying to avoid to get people who never played the game and practice for the prize, so I will not get accurate data for my research.

The questions related to ethics is a bit confusing, I can admit that. But because we want to look from a border point of view. Even though the game legally allow users to purchase items and tools using PED, another user can feel that's unfair because I have been playing for 3 month to get this tools and this level and another person because he have enough money he just can reach the same point just by 1 click because he can buy it.
So in such a situation you users can feel it's unfair.
Some questions we develop and we though that it is not exist but because we are not in the game for years we expect that they might be something we are not aware of.

Like using EU for education, etc. Have a look at these pictures and you will know why we get this idea from.

Accommodation



Adult



Automotive


Domestic Services

Education & learning



Entertainment

Aren't you entertained?

Event organisation



Financial Services




Food & Beverages

well that's a tough one...



Government

Hair & Beauty



Manufacturing & Agriculture



Media & Communication



Medical



Pets



Professional Services



Thank you so much for participating in the survey and for your lovely comments. That's helped me a lot and it means too much for me

 

^ Actually, the person who posted those pictures did it as a joke.

 

I just finish survey and I can say it was very interesting...

Good luck with your research mate

 

Thanks for the follow up! I'm not worried at all about the 50 cents or my personal information, just sharing a little bit of what was going on in my mind as I was participating, and sharing a bit of what others would experience.

Hope the data helps, if you end up publishing or sharing you data please come back and link it for us, I'm confident that there are several of us that would like to see what you found. Best of luck!

 

Ooooh I thought he might share his experience

 

Thank you so much for participating in this survey. Very nice of you, I really appreciate your valuable help

 

Thank you so much. It will be my pleasure to share the final results with this wonderful forum after getting the approval from the University to do so. Thank's again and it is my pleasure to talk to you.