Video Games and Identity Survey -- data collection complete

jerfgoke

jerfgoke

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Some of you may know me from the trading forums, but I'm pretty quiet around here otherwise. In the offline world I am a sociologist at the University of Notre Dame. My current research project is a survey designed to learn more about the different types of gamers out there and the impact of the games on how they see themselves.

I am posting this here (with prior permission from CheapyD) because I hope that some of you will agree to take my survey. I believe it will be the largest and most in-depth sociological study of video gaming and identity conducted thus far. You may find the survey interesting and perhaps a bit fun, and it should take no longer than about 15 minutes to complete. For what it's worth, I am not making any money off this project. Your help is crucial and greatly appreciated since little prior research exists on this topic. Thus, the responses of the CAG community could shape future research in this area.

To take the survey, go to: (URL REMOVED AS DATA COLLETION IS COMPLETE)

Due to university regulations, in order to participate you must be at least 18 years old. If you have any questions, please PM me or email me at the address listed on the link above. I am happy to address any comments or concerns you may have either via email or in this thread. Thank you very much for your help!

mods: if this is posted in the wrong forum, please feel free to move it. I will avoid bumping the thread more than once every 12 hours.

edit 1: To respond to some of the comments below, I will be happy to post a summary of the results and findings in this thread when the study is complete. This is part of my MA thesis work so it is always helpful to have feedback from gamers themselves.

edit 2: The survey has been closed for now so that the results can be compiled. For more information, please see the most recent post in this thread.
 
I took it for you. However, why is FPS not a choice under "What types of games do you play with other people?". One of the games that I play the most with friends is Halo 2, yet FPS is not a chioce.

Great overall survey, I await the results!
 
From the title, I thought you were that guy who said he'd take your favorite games and then tell you about yourself... and got Sub all wrong, from what I remember.
 
[quote name='jeffreyjrose']I took it for you. However, why is FPS not a choice under "What types of games do you play with other people?". One of the games that I play the most with friends is Halo 2, yet FPS is not a chioce.

Great overall survey, I await the results![/QUOTE]
Nice observation. Looking back over this question, I probably should have specifically listed FPS games as a separate category. I kind of lumped them in a not-very-specific "action games not based on war" category. For what it's worth, the reason I did this is because I am specifically interested in war-based action/FPS games as a separate category apart from sci-fi or generic action/FPS games. But thanks for your comment... I'll definitely work that in when/if I have a revised 2.0 version! :)
 
[quote name='sixersballernum3']From the title, I thought you were that guy who said he'd take your favorite games and then tell you about yourself... and got Sub all wrong, from what I remember.[/QUOTE]Ahh, yes, I remember that thread. Maybe I should rename this one. Any suggestions?

Thanks to everybody who has already taken the survey. Your help is much appreciated!
 
took it.

how come "straight" and "heterosexual" are both under sexual orientation?
 
Taken.

I was impressed with the poll questions and answers; very thorough.
 
Took the survey.

I'm really interested to see how many people listed themselves as "asexual". :lol:
 
[quote name='Apossum']took it.

how come "straight" and "heterosexual" are both under sexual orientation?[/QUOTE]No real good reason for this. I've seen other surveys do it, so I stole the practice for myself. Figure that maybe some people are more comfortable identifying one way or another. I'll just combine the categories when I do analyses later on. Thanks to everybody who has completed the survey already.

I do have one question that perhaps somebody can answer:

Why have I lost over half my respondents have at section 4? ("The Games You Play") Is the survey too long? Is there something offensive or annoying that I'm missing? If somebody could answer this it would help out a lot since all this missing data is going to cause some big problems later on. Thanks.
 
I took the entire thing and it did start to feel kinda long around section 4. Perhaps you should include how many pages the survey is so we know how far we are.
 
I can't tell, I think people might freak out about the question on whether or not they choose characters of the opposite sex.

I would like to know why some people always play as guys or girls. I choose girls pretty often, because I just prefer looking at them. Most guys I know always pick guys though.

BTW, cool survey, I enjoyed it.
 
[quote name='willardhaven']I would like to know why some people always play as guys or girls. I choose girls pretty often, because I just prefer looking at them. Most guys I know always pick guys though.[/quote]

I always pick a guy just cuz I'm a guy, I dunno. I guess it's supposed to be a representation of me, and I'm a guy so I choose a guy, I don't really pay attention to my own character when I'm playing games.
 
[quote name='willardhaven']I can't tell, I think people might freak out about the question on whether or not they choose characters of the opposite sex.[/QUOTE]

I got stuck on the 'describe characters you think people would find attractive' part, since there was a seperate section for each gender. I don't think about what girls in my games are 'cute'... like, ever...

And why no 3rd person shooter option for Favorite Genres! I cna barely stand game like Halo... but I love old-school light gun rail shooters (Duck Hunt :D and Time Crisis) and scrolling shooters (Galaga, Xevious, Einhander, even Starfox a bit.)
 
[quote name='DuelLadyS']I got stuck on the 'describe characters you think people would find attractive' part, since there was a seperate section for each gender. I don't think about what girls in my games are 'cute'... like, ever...

And why no 3rd person shooter option for Favorite Genres! I cna barely stand game like Halo... but I love old-school light gun rail shooters (Duck Hunt :D and Time Crisis) and scrolling shooters (Galaga, Xevious, Einhander, even Starfox a bit.)[/quote]

Yeah, I just used what I think makes a girl attractive for the guy part.

I put Mario and Waluigi as sexy guys, was I on point?
 
Took the survey.

I tend to look for good looking strong, wise, sarcastic, and nice (even if they try to act otherwise) guys in games. Unfortunately, not many of them exist and a lot of the guys are just plain ugly in games.
 
Thanks to all that provided great feedback. It looks like I will end up shortening it in the revised version and taking away some of the questions that are causing confusion.
 
[quote name='DuelLadyS']And why no 3rd person shooter option for Favorite Genres! I cna barely stand game like Halo... but I love old-school light gun rail shooters (Duck Hunt :D and Time Crisis) and scrolling shooters (Galaga, Xevious, Einhander, even Starfox a bit.)[/QUOTE]I was mentally grouping them into the generic "action/adventure" category, but I think your classification makes more sense. I should have put a separate category for that. Thanks for your feedback.
 
Very interesting survey. I would definitely be interested in learning the results and left my email.

Incidentally, I'm probably the one that people were alluding to that awhile back in which tried to use favorite games as a means to determine personality type but there wasn't too much interest (and I also flopped on the few that I did try). However, it was really successful at the gamefaqs forum so go figure....
 
[quote name='willardhaven']I can't tell, I think people might freak out about the question on whether or not they choose characters of the opposite sex.

I would like to know why some people always play as guys or girls. I choose girls pretty often, because I just prefer looking at them. Most guys I know always pick guys though.

BTW, cool survey, I enjoyed it.[/QUOTE]

I've always wondered about that myself: why do most guys seem to be more comfortable playing an orc or a robot or an alien or something, rather than ...gasp! ... a girl.
 
Brett, right? Hope you got IRB approval for this. ;)

Overall an *exceptionally* well constructed survey, IMO. How else are you generating responses to this survey (other than posting a thread here)?
 
[quote name='mykevermin']Brett, right? Hope you got IRB approval for this. ;)

Overall an *exceptionally* well constructed survey, IMO. How else are you generating responses to this survey (other than posting a thread here)?[/QUOTE]Yep, it's Brett here. Thanks for the praise! This survey ate up far too much of my time over the past six months, so I am honestly very thrilled that people are enjoying it.

In response to your comment, yes I did have to get university IRB approval for this study, unfortunately--in a process that took far took long and too much paperwork! ;)

To respond to your question, I had hoped that word-of-mouth might spread and that might put me up toward my target 'N' for the study. But, I amazingly somehow just made the front page of Joystiq.com so that helped my numbers out quite a bit.

Now... if I can just make slashdot... hehe
 
Did this survey get posted to Joystiq.com?

EDIT: It appears it did. Congratulations Brett Lantz. It appears you're a minor video game celebrity for the moment :) This survey is front page news.
 
[quote name='jerfgoke']To respond to your question, I had hoped that word-of-mouth might spread and that might put me up toward my target 'N' for the study. But, I amazingly somehow just made the front page of Joystiq.com so that helped my numbers out quite a bit.

Now... if I can just make slashdot... hehe[/QUOTE]

If I can make a critique, doesn't that create issues of selection bias, which would impede the reliability of this survery? Joystiq is nice and might help that somewhat, but I still get a sneaking feeling that you're only getting a partial snapshot through such recruitment means?

Now, help me think through this, as I'm working on the finishing touches for an IRB proposal for the XBL study I told you about awhile back; I'm going to encounter the same recruitment issues, so I'm a bit worried about representation and reliability myself.

BTW, you goin' to Montreal in August?
 
Just noticed that this will be the largest sociological study of gamers yet in the OP.
good work :) I hope to be referencing it in the future, if I ever get a chance to write about gamers for a soc class!
 
[quote name='mykevermin']If I can make a critique, doesn't that create issues of selection bias, which would impede the reliability of this survery? Joystiq is nice and might help that somewhat, but I still get a sneaking feeling that you're only getting a partial snapshot through such recruitment means?

Now, help me think through this, as I'm working on the finishing touches for an IRB proposal for the XBL study I told you about awhile back; I'm going to encounter the same recruitment issues, so I'm a bit worried about representation and reliability myself.

BTW, you goin' to Montreal in August?[/QUOTE]Critiques are always helpful, so don't worry about hurting my feelings unless you're going to be snarky like some of the commenters on joystiq. ;)

The selection bias I'm sure will be the skeleton in the closet for this study. It's been haunting me for a while now--and actually was the one strong critique that came up when I presented at NCSA two weekends ago. Personally--and of course I will need to elaborate on this more in the final paper--I think that I can sidestep the issue somewhat if I spin this as an examination of gamer identities. That is, the paper will work best if I make clear that I am most interested in the Goffman-style performances of those who identify strongly within the culture and structure of video gaming. These are the types of people I will be picking up with my recruitment method, I believe. In short, I'm more interested in the ongoing presentation of some sort of "hardcore" gamer identity than the personality of the entire population of people who play video games.

I think (and perhaps somebody can correct me if I'm wrong) that the media has presented the phenomenon of gaming as a sort of "one-size-fits-all" process that creates gun-toting trenchcoat mafia style killers in waiting. This study should get at some of the underlying processes that may (or may not) contribute to this image and to what extent such ideals pervade gaming culture. We'll see.

Of course, the other response to the selection bias critique is sheer numbers. If I get a large enough sample size, it becomes a phenomenon important in itself, even if it doesn't describe the entire population.

About the ASA conference--as of right now it doesn't look like I'll be attending... It's a long way to travel and we only get reimbursed $250 lifetime for conferences we aren't presenting at (and I'll likely be using this for the gaming conference at Madison this summer). I'm not sold either way, so if you know of a cheap or easy way to go, I'm all ears.

That said, if anybody reading this is planning a career in the social science of video gaming, feel free to contact me if you have questions. I can't guarantee I'll be able to answer everything, but I'll do my best. My email is [email protected].

Thanks to everybody who has completed the survey so far! :)
 
[quote name='jerfgoke']when I presented at NCSA two weekends ago[/QUOTE]

Shit, I didn't go this year; had I known you presented, I would have jumped onto a roundtable at the last minute ;)

I got a paper accepted at a general ASA session, so I'll be going. The cheapest hotel/flight package I found was $670 for 3 or 4 nights, about a mile and a half from the conference hotel ($200+/night).

I'll be the sociologist on rollerskates.
 
Tonight I have closed access to the video games and identity survey so that I can compile the results. Participation was absolutely overwhelming and exceeded my wildest expectations. There is some great data here.

Thank you to all who participated and made this survey a success. I will be posting results here sometime before June and will be submitting a story to joystiq.com at the same time.
 
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