Participate in a study about playing video games!

[starph]

Participate in a study about playing video games!

You are invited to participate in a study about people that play video games and the relationship in gaining certain skills when playing video games.

Participation in this research entails taking a survey answering questions about yourself and some information regarding video games. Additionally, you will be given some problems to solve. All survey respondent information will be anonymous. Your participation will take approximately 15 to 20 minutes, and possibly longer if you spend additional time on the problems.
By taking part in this research study, you may help increase our understanding as to how video games might affect our daily life.
To participate, please visit this weblink:
< http://goo.gl/forms/kaFb26zhCY>

If you have any questions, we can be reached at: [email protected] or [email protected].

Thank you!
Gretchen Reevy, California State University, East Bay
Stephanie Menjivar Quijano, Alumna, California State University, East Bay

[Erik_Twice]

Some flaws with the questions:

1) Some categories are weird (PC Games?)
2) Some game genres are missing (Driving, Shmups, Turn-based strategy) despite other minor genres being included.
3) Sid Meier's Civilization is listed as a Real-Time strategy game despite being turn-based.
4) I'm mostly indifferent to many questions (Eg. Prefer "Solo" or "Group") but there's no answer for that.
5) I don't think many players will understand what "Soloing/Grouping" is. The test is obviously thinking of MMORPGs ala WoW with that question, but most people will think of Cooperative games ala Left 4 Dead.
6) Similarly, most people won't know what "Guilds" or "loot-oriented" means.
7) While standard, you are forced to play along in order to answer the dilemmas at the end and even interpret what they mean. I'm confused at what "strongest life habits" are, don't know anything about fashion design and getting into politics should not be based on terms of success.
The end of the test is incredibly boring and you can cheat by inputting garbage text (It will show "Must show (word)" in red letters). Not that it matters, because it doesn't let me continue even if I reload the page

Hope that helps.

[nightrnr]

Yeah, the anagram portion is bugged. Won't let you finish even with the right answers.

Also, this does seem to be MMO themed. I don't play MMO's, so I don't feel like it applies to or includes me as a gamer.

[pierrot]

I understand that English isn't your first language, Erik, so I hope you won't interpret this as being picked on, but to potentially clear up some areas of confusion:

7) [...]I'm confused at what "strongest life habits" are,

"Strongest life habits," implies that they are strongly ingrained, habitual routines that would be most difficult to attempt to break.

[...] and getting into politics should not be based on terms of success.

This is surely true, but from the perspective of a cost/benefit analysis, which would factor in to almost anyone's thought process in making decisions, it is relevant.

8) The end of the test is incredibly boring and you can cheat by inputting garbage text (It will show "Must show (word)" in red letters). Not that it matters, because it doesn't let me continue even if I reload the page

Right, it's attempting to not allow you to cheat. However, it is overzealous, and flagged four fields, which I had answered in earnest. I had to remove them all together in order to submit the survey, which could be a problem in terms of results. Also, I don't think those questions were necessarily meant to entertain, but I didn't find them to be boring, either.

Some flaws with the questions:
1) Some categories are weird (PC Games?)
2) Some game genres are missing (Driving, Shmups, Turn-based strategy) despite other minor genres being included.
3) Sid Meier's Civilization is listed as a Real-Time strategy game despite being turn-based.
4) I'm mostly indifferent to many questions (Eg. Prefer "Solo" or "Group") but there's no answer for that.
5) I don't think many players will understand what "Soloing/Grouping" is. The test is obviously thinking of MMORPGs ala WoW with that question, but most people will think of Cooperative games ala Left 4 Dead.
6) Similarly, most people won't know what "Guilds" or "loot-oriented" means.
[...]

Hope that helps.

These are legitimate points, there's a bit of peculiar, and apparently arbitrary overlap in the categories: Counter-Strike under "Action," and Team Fortress under "PC games," despite FPS category.
Most of the motivation questions do appear to assume a great deal of familiarity with MMO (-RPGs in particular; specifically those by western developers) games. Survey results from this website are liable to be anomalous data points.

[ElkinFencer10]

So here are my gripes/suggestions.

1. Of course, being one of the most bleeding heart/left wing people here, I take issue with the fact that your gender options are limited to male and female. Sex and gender are not the same thing.

2. The genres are all screwed up. "PC Games" isn't a genre," Civilization isn't real time (as has been mentioned), and (also previously mentioned) some major genres were left out.

3. You should probably come up with categories a little more distinct than "a lot" and "a great deal" since those are basically the same thing with only option positioning indicating which one is supposed to be greater.

4. Your anagram section is FUBAR. Half of them told me it was wrong even when I typed exactly what it told me it needed and would only accept a blank box as correct. I don't even.

[starph]

Hi everyone!

Thank you for all the suggestions, I really appreciate the feedback, constructive criticism, or simply your opinion to the survey itself. I feel the need to clarify some aspects to my survey, given the nature of the survey (aka being online, being posted on a public forum, google forms, etc). without revealing too much...since this will be seen as public (and sharing extra information may lead potential "volunteers" to answer a certain way to the questions...):
The questionnaires (or simply surveys; whichever way you wanna call them) are surveys that were already constructed/created by other people (researchers) that have dedicated time to build them and all. I know that the connection might be unclear (or simply bogus) at first when doing it...but that's where my role comes along, and that is, interpreting the results. BUT, I could modify the demographic information form since that's something I could maneuver better since I contributed to create it.
-- Yes, I agree, there are limitations as to how things will be collected...there is a greater risk when it comes to doing online surveying, and regardless, I had decided to take that risk. Unfortunately (for me), I have to work with whatever resource I have at my disposal....and that is Google forms. I'm already limited to do certain things, to format certain ways, and so on.
However, technicalities-wise that were suggested I will modify (i.e. not letting you submit because of the anagrams, etc). I will definitely update the demographic info form .But, I can't update it right now since the data collection has started. I will do it though, once I move to my next step to the study (since this will be an ongoing study and what you are being exposed to is the genesis to that study).
Lastly, I want to clarify that I'm just informing, and if you read my reply, thank you, it really shows that you have somewhat of an interest on this. And if you didn't bother to read it...no hard feelings there. either way, hope this helps as well.

Thank you guys!
starph