Am Wednesday 06 May 2009 19:03:33 schrieb Tateru Nino: > At least four lists. > > Maggie Leber (sl: Maggie Darwin) wrote: > >> Date: Wed, 6 May 2009 20:31:24 +1000 > >> From: "Jonathan Bishop"<[email protected]> > >> Subject: Re: [sldev] Avatar-user survey: PLEASE complete it > >> To:<[email protected]> > >> Inappropriate use of this list. > >> > >> In spite of the University of the Free State URL, I would doubt this is > >> legitimate as this is not the way university research surveys are > >> conducted. > >> > >> > >> I would think carefully before following this link (I have not). To > >> start with, the invitation is missing the ethics committee authorization > >> and university certification ID, and one would have to wonder what > >> sampling approach involves the sldev list as an avatar sampling base. > >> > >> If we sent out an invitation for University research studies like this > >> in Oz we would be up before the ethics committee in a flash. > > > > This spam hit the scripters list too, where I mentioned the lack of > > research ethics compliance. > > > > I'd be in favor of banning the sender from both lists. > >
honestly I have mixed feelings about the post in question. On the one hand I understand that people feel spammed (and I do feel spammed myself) by surveys, esp. when it's claimed to be for scientific research but without proof. On the other hand when I was student I had to let fill in people a lot of surveys for scientific research and my professors didn't think about providing anything that could have been used as proof that the survery was really university research. "And better not mention it is for the department of psychology, because that could be bad for compliance". Cool. And now get 100 particpants or you'll miss your course. "Hello, I can not tell you for whom I'm gathering data and what I'm up to because that would bad for the design, but please give me 100 answers about absolutely personal questions. I promise it's all anonymous". I know the research instrument of the post in question very well and that it is only useful for science, because its only a weak measure for the underlaying construct, so I tend to believe that this comes from another victim of professoral ignorance about the non-anonymity of the internet. I can not tell, could also be just spam and from somebody up to no good. To bring my post on topic: It's absolutely necessary to gather behavioural data, like the "UI streamlining strategy" thread shows. That includes gathering data about psychological constructs, if you don't want to waste your time and gazilobytes of storage. At the mentioned thread Frans is writing "I agree though it would have to be opt-in and maybe only in public nighties and release candites. I expect users using those clients are more willing to share that info.". This is a theory about behaviour, and by the way it fits very good to a common psychological theory about personality dimensions (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits#Openness_to_Experience). According to that theory it's also more likely that persons using public nighties and release candites are better informed about how to use more sophisticated features and more likely up to try new features. Bad sample though for getting to know what an average user would do. Shows that research is necessary and it needs to be planned carefully. So to learn from the post in question: what are the community standards to do scientific research, how can the researcher make clear this is not spam, this is not to abuse data, this is to help to find new solutions which are useful? Is there a wiki page or another ressource where researchers can learn how to do it right for not annoying people? Are there Lindens which can be contacted for scientific research purposes? Sorry for that post got way too long, but if you read that far I hope you understand why :) Armin _______________________________________________ Policies and (un)subscribe information available here: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/SLDev Please read the policies before posting to keep unmoderated posting privileges
