Help on my thesis

memj

Hey guys,

I have been a long time reader of Penny-Arcade, but I am not a forum jockey, so this is my first post. I just wanted to say thanks for putting together such great material. Anywho the real reason I am posting is I am doing a Game addiction study for my Psychology Thesis and need some help from your readers or anyone who plays games. The survey takes 5 min to fill out. Yes I know it has typos, and there are some vague questions. It is my first real study, that I have thrown together in 2 months. The link is as follows.

http://zer0her0.info/survey/surveyconsent.html

Hope you guys can help me out.

Memj

Tarranon

hey guys let's turn this into a thread about addiction to electronic entertainment, whether it differs from other addictions, whether it's more harmful because more time is sunk, seeing as time moves faster when playing games since they're more involving than other types of entertainment, and so forth.

Low Key

What's your thesis on? Games addiction sounds kind of broad and over done.

Also I'm not sure the mods are too cool with using this place to conduct surveys. But the mods are usually drunk and out yelling at the neigbour's kids at this time of day.

tynic

You took two months to 'throw together' a survey, and it still has typos and 'vague' questions in it?

I really hope this is some kind of undergrad thesis.

Low Key

My thesis is just going to be a mix of drunken ramblings and a dream I had about electric moon monkeys. But you can get away with that kind of thing in psychology.

Thanatos

Eh, the D&D mods have my blessing to move this to H/A if they so choose.

Dark Moon

I'm going to complete the survey, but I'd like to ask a few questions that I hope will allow me to better answer the questions provided. If you could skim through my ramblings and perhaps answer a question or two it would be appreciated.

What is question 8 asking? The question is very vague and doesn't make a great deal of sense in its current context. What game is "the game"? What do you mean in regards to level? Are you referring to the level of skill you feel you have achieved in the game or do you want a number?

I'm also curious about question 14. You have a large grouping of yes or no answers, yet you still allow us to select from a scale of strongly agree to strongly disagree? How can one be neutral when replying to a statement like "I own two or more gaming consoles"? How could you possibly take that into account when gathering your results?

Please also be aware that you are polling a very select sample group. If your thesis is simply looking into relationships between various aspects of the game addicted, then this is likely an ideal group as your survey will probably identify a large number of people addicted to games who post here. If you are looking for more "mainstream" gamers or, god forbid, the general public, your survey would be better off in a more general forum that's not targetted towards such a niche gaming market. Though I'm sure you've already considered this, I just thought I'd point it out again.

Meeble

I think I may have contradicted myself ever so slightly on that survey... :shock:

DynamiteKid

'I have broken up with someone because they couldn't handle that you play too many video games.'

Why would I break up with someone over YOU playing too many games? I don't give a shit how many games you play.

I don't know what schooling level this equates to in England, but I do Psychology at A2 level at this point, and this questionnaire would have been torn to shreds by either of my teachers by now.

DrFrylock

Indeed; I completed the survey but found it difficult to do so accurately. The problems were pretty obvious.

What level did you reach in the game? You just asked me a question about what games I've played in the last two weeks. Which game? Any game? I don't remember. I think I hit Level 30 in old-school Dragon Warrior. I was once +15 kills over deaths in Counter-Strike on a decent pub. I'm pretty sure all my characters hit 99 in Final Fantasy VII. I'm playing through Oblivion at about level 10 but never sleeping so I don't level up and make my life hard, but my guy is pretty buff. So is the answer 99? Or "10 but pretty buff?"

How many hours did I play the game (estimate if I can't check ingame)? Again, which game? Is that total hours played? For all the videogames ever in my life? God, I couldn't even imagine.

The last page had a series of questions, most of which indicated an affirmative or negative answer. Yet there was still the strongly disagree<->strongly agree spectrum as an answer selector. The questions were phrased wrong; they're supposed to be statements with which you agree or disagree at some degree.

tony_important

not too sound too blunt,

but

based on what I've read here, and what I've tried to understand from this test...

Maybe you should re-design this thing. There are some serious errors in your survey.

Testing error is known to have a major effect on the relevancy and reliability of a test. If many people are not sure of what your questions mean, and they are left to decipher what it is they do mean, then you've got a problem my friend.

If you patch up the little mistakes, and bring a better focus onto the goal of the test, you should be able to get more accurate results.

memj

Well, the survey specifically is based on gamers history more than anything. The questions like 8 that are vague, are there because I am trying to get some information out of you. And yes there are always errors, but that is why I am giving this survey to many varieties of people and it has been tested in several forms, before this one. The questions that really matter are the likert scale questions, and what games you have play and your motivations. I am trying to correlate reasons for play, complexity, achievement, to addictions.

I have created a matrix to break games and reasons for play down, based on their reward structure. It is my first study, and yes it is for my undergrad degree. I really only want to show a correlation exists so future work can be done, because not one has done any work in the area. I also want to show that an achievement oriented player is much less addicted. The addiction questions are based on those that are asked of sexaholics, alcohilics, gamblers, and drug addicts.

And as for turning this into a thread about electronic equipment addiction it would be a sign if you are a gamer that you have an addiction to it. You are supporting your habit.

Thanks Again

Memj

bone daddy

memj wrote:

And as for turning this into a thread about electronic equipment addiction it would be a sign if you are a gamer that you have an addiction to it. You are supporting your habit.

That makes about as much sense as "1-Strongly Disagree" and "5-Strongly Disagree." Seriously, if you are going to be using this as part of your thesis, you need to get this cleaned up or the sloppiness is going to invalidate your data and any conclusions your draw based on it.

Doc

memj wrote:

Well, the survey specifically is based on gamers history more than anything. The questions like 8 that are vague, are there because I am trying to get some information out of you. And yes there are always errors, but that is why I am giving this survey to many varieties of people and it has been tested in several forms, before this one. The questions that really matter are the likert scale questions, and what games you have play and your motivations. I am trying to correlate reasons for play, complexity, achievement, to addictions.

I have created a matrix to break games and reasons for play down, based on their reward structure. It is my first study, and yes it is for my undergrad degree. I really only want to show a correlation exists so future work can be done, because not one has done any work in the area. I also want to show that an achievement oriented player is much less addicted. The addiction questions are based on those that are asked of sexaholics, alcohilics, gamblers, and drug addicts.

And as for turning this into a thread about electronic equipment addiction it would be a sign if you are a gamer that you have an addiction to it. You are supporting your habit.

Thanks Again

Memj

I answered "60" to question #8. I hope that helps.

Edit: and "2000" to question #10.

memj

bone daddy wrote:

memj wrote:

And as for turning this into a thread about electronic equipment addiction it would be a sign if you are a gamer that you have an addiction to it. You are supporting your habit.

That makes about as much sense as "1-Strongly Disagree" and "5-Strongly Disagree." Seriously, if you are going to be using this as part of your thesis, you need to get this cleaned up or the sloppiness is going to invalidate your data and any conclusions your draw based on it.

And I already said I can't change it without having to go through a lot of trouble if you would actually read my earlier posts. Someone else posted it via PHP. Web design is not my strong suit.

Gafoto

So this is a thinly disguised test to show that everyone who plays WoW is a gaming addict. I mean, the entire test is arranged for that game, it's obvious you had it in mind. The only thing I've been playing for the past month or so has been a Tony Hawk game and it made answering the questions really fucking weird.

MagicToaster

I don't think you can get any useful data from this survey. It's poorly thought out and excecuted. Also, I felt that some of these questions were biased.

I'd say do it over... but considering that you are conducting this over the internet and that you procrastinated for two months to throw this together at the last minute, I'm willing to bet you're not gonna do this over.

Seriously, this is a terrible survey.

unilateral

I took it because I know I'm gonna be striving for participants in a few years, but damn was it confusing.

What level did you obtain? I just don't get it. You should really have a faculty advisor or someone look over this for you and give some advice on fixing the questions. Or just change it based on what the people above me have said. Some of the questions just aren't grammatically correct.

At my school, my undergrad thesis for psychology is the culmination of 2 years of work with a professor advising you along the way. This needs to be changed if you want accurate results. This questionnaire wouldn't even pass my 200-level experiment design class.

At the very least, if it's truly too late to change the survey as you say, you need to explain in your discussion section how the questionnaire had some problems with clarity.

bone daddy

memj wrote:

bone daddy wrote:

That makes about as much sense as "1-Strongly Disagree" and "5-Strongly Disagree." Seriously, if you are going to be using this as part of your thesis, you need to get this cleaned up or the sloppiness is going to invalidate your data and any conclusions your draw based on it.

And I already said I can't change it without having to go through a lot of trouble if you would actually read my earlier posts. Someone else posted it via PHP. Web design is not my strong suit.

Yes, I know you said that. That's why I said that this is something you need to do before it invalidates your data and your conclusions. I'm not being hyperbolic just for the hell of it or something. This could very easily torpedo your thesis if you are using these results for anything that can't be scuttled immediately if a professor really looks at your methodology and goes "Wtf, mates^?", which the example I quoted will very likely cause them to say. The sooner it's corrected, the less trouble it's going to be. If it's going to be "a lot" now, imagine what you'll be looking at if you keep on rolling with this only to get cockpunched in the middle of spring term.