Requesting assistance with research survey
 

Greetings -

I am currently completing a doctoral dissertation exploring the motivation of addon developers for WoW, and like someone a few threads down on this board, I'm hoping to get folk to answer some questions on a survey. The survey is located at https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/TRVV3HB, and is completely anonymous. The IRB at my university (Pepperdine) frowns on paid surveys, so I'm unable to offer any compensation for participation - sorry about that.

I'm happy to discuss my research questions with anyone interested - my primary interest is in what motivates addon developers first to develop addons, and then to share it with others. I've had the opportunity to interview a handful of developers, and now I'm trying through this survey to further clarify ("confirm" or "deny" would be too definitive for social science research, which is notoriously squishy) the themes I've encountered in the interviews. The survey is 22 questions (mostly yes/no or multiple choice), so it's designed to be quick to complete. I very much appreciate any assistance folks who frequent these forums can offer - thanks for considering it.

Survey done.

Many, many thanks! Seriously.
Eric

Filled it as well.
Decently structured (judging by the relatively low proportion of questions I had to make use of the "other" option)

Filled it out myself.

Well, that just made my day! (It would have warmed the heart of my Research Methods instructor, too, if she hadn't had her heart surgically replaced with a lump of compressed evil and spite...)

Thanks!
E

Well structured, yes sir!

- Filled

High praise from a Chromatic Dragonspawn! :) (most of my encounters with dragonspawn get off on the wrong foot, and go downhill from there...)

Thanks much.

The survey site pretended to be dead for a few minutes, but I persevered. That's a fascinating choice of a doctoral dissertation, by the way :)

Thanks - SurveyMonkeys are apparently highly susceptible to all forms of stunlock...

In all truth, there are days when I'm amazed at what they'll give you a degree for. And then there are days when I'm slogging through literature review and I think "I've been hornswoggled, and have ended up in Hell." In all truth, however, the whole area of gaming and addon/mods is a pretty interesting intersection of software development and play and community building and legal issues around player/corporate interests. Yet when you ask addon devs, mostly they consider all that stuff secondary to their own personal reasons. I'm not saying I'll want to touch the damn thing once it's completed, but I will say it's been an interesting exploration.

E

Well, we do like to carry weapons all the time, unlike most of the flight. It says a lot.

Heh, true. Though, probably, understandable - after the 11,000th eager beaver explorer saying "oh, hey, I've got this Drakefire Amulet, and I'm looking for... I dunno how to pronounce it... General Drak... Drakeysack... Drakkisath? Have you seen him?", you'd probably decide "screw this, I'm whacking the next one, and I'm gonna use my big-ass sword I got on my birthday to do it!"

Done.

Finally, a WoW-related "research survey" that didn't ask me when I plan to move out of my mom's basement!

The last question on the second-to-last page (I think) needs an "Other" option, though. I didn't feel that any of the answer choices accurately reflected my opinion on the addon development process. I don't look at it as a job, but I don't look at it as a game either... a good analogy might be cooking a complicated meal so I can enjoy eating it and take pride in sharing it, though I admit sometimes it's more like cooking something just to show by comparison how awful someone else's cooking was, or to spite the thoughtless kitchen designer. :o

HA! That's going in the paper for sure! :)

I've added the Other option as you've suggested. Thanks for the nuanced feedback - much appreciated. Say "hey" to your mom for me, and compliment her on the recent renovation choices - wood paneling was sooo 1970s .... the new paint and lighting really brightened up the place ;)

Done as well...

Some of the questions don't lead to a general binary answer though, e.g. if you'd pick a job as an addon developer. Would most likely depend a lot on the job itself (well, at least those questions had comment fields).

Hope you still remember us once you're done, could be interesting to read your results (even though it will be months ahead and Ill most likely have forgotten about it by then )

This is actually the first survey I've ever filled out; after the first few questions, I usually bail because they're extremely leading and/or biased. Very well done!

Touché! Loved the kitchen designer analogy :D

Agreed. One of my real challenges constructing the survey (and the larger research) was trying to find the balance between survey fatigue and the desire to get as much insight as possible (The first draft of the survey was much, much longer!). Personally, as a researcher I want as many open-ended responses as possible, since the answers tend to be richer and more illuminating, but I know of myself that I get irritated when surveys have an "Other" or "Tell me more" option on every question - to me it suggests a laziness, that the author figures "well, hell, I don't have to refine these questions, because I'll just give the respondents an option to fix my sloppy wording..' On the other hand, it costs nothing to include the "other" option, so perhaps I need to get over my own particular suvey hang-ups...

I'll be sure to share a synopsis of the findings in several weeks when I close the survey. To date, 31 folks have responded, so there should be some good stuff to evaluate. Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to participate - I'm very, very appreciative!

Thanks! I appreciate that you gave it a chance, given past history :D