seeking participants for *quick* academic survey

Using virtual worlds for education
Mercury Blue
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Re: seeking participants for *quick* academic survey

Post by Mercury Blue »

Graham Mills wrote:... and we can also segue easily from digital heritage into the area of edutainment. Ultimately it's all in the eye of the beholder anyway...
Ilan Tochner wrote:That's a good question. In an environment where everything was created by one person or another, what differentiates art from just another high-quality object? Or is every high quality object art?
It's such an interesting question, I think about that all the time when I see in-world museum that's clearly taken a ton of time, creativity, and skill as an object unto itself. I think in many ways it's related to symbolic ideas about how we socially define "art" as such IRL, as well as, like you said Graham, the inevitable eye of the beholder....
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Re: seeking participants for *quick* academic survey

Post by Mercury Blue »

Minethere Always wrote:I did the survey just now, mainly because I saw it on 2 forums I watch so I figured it is less likely to be spam....lol
Thanks so much for taking my survey! Apologies in advance if you see it pop up on any of your other forums - I have a few more to post on other world boards. (Often SL gets all the love where academic research is concerned, so I'm interested in approaching my research from a more world-inclusive perspective.)
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Re: seeking participants for *quick* academic survey

Post by Deuce Halsey »

Mercury Blue wrote:
Deuce Halsey wrote:FYI to the OP:

I attempted to take this survey just now. Unfortunately I got to a question where none of the options were valid responses for my situation. The survey would not allow me to continue without picking one of the selection of invalid options, so I quit the survey.
Hi Deuce, sorry to hear that! If you don't mind my asking, what was the question? I'm always interested in learning how I can improve it. Thanks for taking a look at my survey though, your interest is greatly appreciated!
I forget the exact wording of the question. But it was a question about what things I didn't like about museums. I liked all the things listed, so I couldn't select any of them. I figured no problem, just move on to the next question. Unfortunately the survey would not let me continue until I selected at least one of the options. I couldn't find a "none of the above" option, so I was stuck.
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Marstol Nitely
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Re: seeking participants for *quick* academic survey

Post by Marstol Nitely »

That was actually kind of fun. Then again, I love both real and virtual museums. :D
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Re: seeking participants for *quick* academic survey

Post by Graham Mills »

I'm not sure it answers the question so much as question the answers. :) Look forward to seeing your report. Please do post back here when it's done.
Mercury Blue wrote:
Graham Mills wrote:I'm curious as to how you define museum as opposed to, say, an interactive historical or technological exhibit used in teaching or recreation (though I'm not sure whether the latter includes role-play). Is it the nature of the intent, the interpretation or the level of access? I just did a search for "museums" in the Kitely public worlds, for example, and it failed to identify Lisbon 1755 or the Titanic build. I have been recreating part of the university for which I work as it was in the Victorian era with a focus on some of the notable scientists who worked there at the time. I've used it with students but it's not open to the public. Is it a private museum?
Hi Graham, thanks for the thoughts! It's such an interesting question, and a complicated one. There are so many things in-world that are like museums IRL but are not self-identified as museums, and by the same token so many things that self-identify as museums but are nothing like what we would traditionally consider a "museum". That's part of what I'm interested in - the way that these spaces provide people with the ability to explore what "museum" means to them and blur the boundaries that have traditionally defined what a museum is, does, and looks like. As a result I've intentionally stayed away from defining what "museum" means, as the only definition I could provide would necessarily limit the scope essentially to things that qualify IRL as museums, which I'm not convinced is a meaningful defining criteria for in-world museums. In short, I've avoided a definition because I'm interested to hear about what residents consider a museum within an in-world context. Apologies for the incredibly long answer, I hope this answers your question!
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Re: seeking participants for *quick* academic survey

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Deuce Halsey wrote:
Mercury Blue wrote:
Deuce Halsey wrote:FYI to the OP:

I attempted to take this survey just now. Unfortunately I got to a question where none of the options were valid responses for my situation. The survey would not allow me to continue without picking one of the selection of invalid options, so I quit the survey.
Hi Deuce, sorry to hear that! If you don't mind my asking, what was the question? I'm always interested in learning how I can improve it. Thanks for taking a look at my survey though, your interest is greatly appreciated!
I forget the exact wording of the question. But it was a question about what things I didn't like about museums. I liked all the things listed, so I couldn't select any of them. I figured no problem, just move on to the next question. Unfortunately the survey would not let me continue until I selected at least one of the options. I couldn't find a "none of the above" option, so I was stuck.
Ah, thanks for pointing that out! That should have an "other/none of the above option" that I must have missed - I'll amend it. Thanks!
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Re: seeking participants for *quick* academic survey

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Marstol Nitely wrote:That was actually kind of fun. Then again, I love both real and virtual museums. :D
Thanks Marstol! :)
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Re: seeking participants for *quick* academic survey

Post by Mercury Blue »

Graham Mills wrote:I'm not sure it answers the question so much as question the answers. :) Look forward to seeing your report. Please do post back here when it's done.
Mercury Blue wrote:
Graham Mills wrote:I'm curious as to how you define museum as opposed to, say, an interactive historical or technological exhibit used in teaching or recreation (though I'm not sure whether the latter includes role-play). Is it the nature of the intent, the interpretation or the level of access? I just did a search for "museums" in the Kitely public worlds, for example, and it failed to identify Lisbon 1755 or the Titanic build. I have been recreating part of the university for which I work as it was in the Victorian era with a focus on some of the notable scientists who worked there at the time. I've used it with students but it's not open to the public. Is it a private museum?
Hi Graham, thanks for the thoughts! It's such an interesting question, and a complicated one. There are so many things in-world that are like museums IRL but are not self-identified as museums, and by the same token so many things that self-identify as museums but are nothing like what we would traditionally consider a "museum". That's part of what I'm interested in - the way that these spaces provide people with the ability to explore what "museum" means to them and blur the boundaries that have traditionally defined what a museum is, does, and looks like. As a result I've intentionally stayed away from defining what "museum" means, as the only definition I could provide would necessarily limit the scope essentially to things that qualify IRL as museums, which I'm not convinced is a meaningful defining criteria for in-world museums. In short, I've avoided a definition because I'm interested to hear about what residents consider a museum within an in-world context. Apologies for the incredibly long answer, I hope this answers your question!
Haha, yes, that does seem to be the case with how this research is going in general. Will do, I'd be happy to share it when it's done!
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Re: seeking participants for *quick* academic survey

Post by Constance Peregrine »

Not that I am interested in any money for doing this [as I did] but I find this rather interesting:

"I know that there are a lot of researchers seeking virtual world participants at the moment, and 1,500 I'z is not exactly big bucks, and but I've really enjoyed the vibrance of InWorldz' cultural scene and I would love some insight from residents older than I. (And, you know, grad student funding my own research = not a lot of those big bucks with which to fund it.)"

I would much rather have seen you not offer any money than to offer it to only one [or more] certain grids. [going to post this in another forum also, fyi]
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Re: seeking participants for *quick* academic survey

Post by Mercury Blue »

Hi Minethere,
(Sorry, I know I already posted this in the other forum too, but want to address it here also.)
Thanks for your thoughts! That's certainly something that I struggled with when I designed this study. I ideally wanted to be able to post all of the surveys for incentive, but after calculating how many responses I was seeking x how many worlds (about 20 responses in about 25 worlds) I realized that to be able to offer any kind of even remotely reasonable compensation (I'm doing around $3 each) would cost around $1,500. (I could have done a smaller incentive, but I didn't want it to be such a small amount that people would perceive it as insulting.) Unfortunately, since this research is self-funded, that ended up being far out of my reach financially, so I decided that a compromise would be to offer incentive for the worlds with a large number of indexed museums and with fairly large populations (i.e. worlds in which I might be able to reach a large number of people who might be interested). For my purposes, I decided on offering incentive in SecondLife and InWorldz, partially because SL is so popular and InWorldz is part of the OpenSim worlds, which I wanted to make sure had representation. (In addition, not all worlds included in my study support a simple way of transferring money, and I didn't want to do something like PayPal that would compromise anonymity of participants.)
I tried to make it clear from my non-incentive postings that this particular survey was not offering incentive, while some of the others (only SL and IW) may, but it seems I was not clear enough, so my apologies for the confusion.
Interestingly, in my incentive surveys, many people have taken them anonymously (i.e. without the incentive) and there has not been a significant difference in participation between the incentivized and the non-incentivized surveys, so perhaps I didn't need incentive for any of them after all. At the time I was devising this study though, I had no idea what the response would be like and I noted comments suggesting low response rates for some studies posted in forums, so I offered incentive for some surveys as a way of hedging my bets in case there was little interest otherwise. Again, my apologies - I didn't realize that my wording was not clear, and it certainly was not my intent to mislead.
I wanted to be able to offer incentive across the board, but the limited incentive was a necessary financial concession to maximize what I was not sure would be a robust response, and is certainly not an indication of the regard in which I hold any of the non-incentivized worlds I posted in. Sorry for the very long answer, and please let me know if you have any other questions about this, your concerns are certainly something I take very seriously.
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