Are you a virtual property thief? academic anonymous surveyFollow

Hi Everyone!

You are invited to take part in a research project at Deakin University in Australia.

The primary objective of this proposed survey is to collect information on individuals are self proclaimed virtual property thieves (which is not a legislated crime at the moment). If you are an individual who has conducted virtual property theft, we want to find out how you conduct virtual property theft, when you are conducting virtual property theft, which virtual property items you steal (and how many), and finally how you sell these items.

This survey is TOTALLY anonymous, no identifiable information is collected (IP Address etc). SurveyMonkey allows authors to disable the storage of email addresses and disable IP address collection for all collection methods so authors can collect anonymous survey responses.

We are only aiming for a maximum of 50 respondents, but if we get more its great! If you choose to participate, thanks and we look forward to some interesting results!

The survey link is below:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/askavirtualthief


Survey apprived 8/17/2011 ~ Administrator Kaolian"

Edited, Aug 31st 2011 1:18pm by Xsarus Lock Thread: user request

But America's all that matters donchaknow.

Yea I do agree. But the ruling itself was a first and centered around the virtual property that was strong armed from the kid. They probably wouldn't have gotten 80-days /or 160 hours service for just the beating part; but then again I don't really know Dutch law and punishment.

Well, not just America...

Australia is practically America anyway right?

I don't follow, four different spots? Why false data for, why not just don't do it?

I'm one of the risks you take when you want to have other people do your homework online.

Hey everyone, let's all give him false answers!

[sm]The beauty is, even if you throw out outliers, you can't know for sure how much is honest answering and how much is fake.

Spoiler It's all ************************

That's the problem. You've come to a forum with no idea about what we really do here and no idea of why a number of us hate surveys with a livid passion; you didn't do your research and with no understanding of your survey pool the survey itself is going to be about as useful as a mesh condom.

Self proclaimed virtual property thieves? Do you even have any idea if that is possible in the game this forum supports? Do you have any idea of how posters here generally react to such activities? Have you thought about how these things will influence your results? No, you haven't, and I'm embarrassed for whoever has the misfortune to be your adviser. They'll grant a piled higher and deeper to anyone these days.

What bugs me is the "which is not a legislated crime at the moment" interjection. What purpose does it serve? Most of the presentation is neutral, there's effort made to stress neutrality (no IP logging or personal information), and then you have the above aside suggesting approval while the survey itself says which suggests disapproval.

Back when I was more involved with Psychology (one freshman class and then living with a major while she was Thesising) it was stressed upon us that how the survey is written is critical to the results received, and that a consistent tone was integral. This was up to eleven years ago though, so I'm curious if things have changed.

EDIT: and Rhodekylle's comments were toward this forum in particular. It's small enough to have a tight-knit forum community while prominent enough to be caught up in the net whenever somebody wants to do a survey of WoW players. In some cases such as yours the surveyer is alert enough to get permission first but relatively recently we had a flood of poorly-written surveys that were apparently assigned by a teacher who didn't teach the kids how to do a proper one. Lots of "I'm trying to show that gamers are introverted. plz respond."

In addition we don't support hackers. In order to maintain it's officially sanctioned (or however it's qualified) status Zam has a zero-tolerance policy on discussion of hacks or cheats, and so while I'm sure some lurkers are more open to the idea most of the people here are more likely to have been victims. And it's understandable to get hostility from a victim.

I don't know where you've posted this survey and what results you may get, but if things don't work out I suggest designing a survey about hacking/theft in general, for victims and perpetrators alike as well as general feelings. It could be presented in a much more approachable manner and then you can filter out the data points of people who say they've stolen digital goods to do your *actual* analysis. As I said my survey experience is rather old and you're the PhD student so you probably know better than I, but I dislike making criticisms without offering solutions.

Edited, Aug 22nd 2011 11:20pm by selebrin

Edited, Aug 22nd 2011 11:21pm by selebrin

You needed a survey to tell you that?

Do you know what would have to happen to make stuff like stealing virtual currency illegal? You do understand that the changes needed to make that stuff illegal could end up destroying MMO gaming entirely?

Other "and then send me back the link to the thread"...