WoW Questionnaire

[grunty]

Hello All

My name is Christopher Patrick and aswell as being a devoted wow player I am also a final year psychology student in UCC (Ireland). For my BA thesis I am looking at the interactions between Wow Addictions, playstyles and personality. If you have 5 min to spare it would be great if you could contribute by following this link:

http://minerva.ucc.ie:6336/phpESP/public/survey.php?name=wow

Note you do not need to be addicted to contribute, all responses are welcome as long as you are over 18:)

Thank you

[Tanitha]

Nice questionnare. If you are editing the look / template though it might pay to insert a space or linebreak between every five check boxes. On higher resolutions it takes a bit of coordination to get the right boxes - especially with the volume on a page :grin:

Or maybe I'm just getting too old!

[snowieken]

I'm sorry, but for now I deleted your link. We kinda made it a policy to ask permission from one of the admins (Elly or Rushster) before posting surveys and questionnaires. Yours looks okay, but we tend to ask this to everyone posting such a thing, so we are obliged to ask this of you as well. It's basically just a formality, not to mention a courteous thing to do.

So, please send a PM to either Rushster or Elly with your link and the request that this can be reopened. Thank you for understanding and if you have any further questions, you can always PM me, or one of the other moderators, as well.

[snowieken]

Permission granted, thread reopened.

[Piemaster]

Judging by the number of people doing university thesis on WoW, in a year's time there should be reams and reams of literature available on the psycholgy of the WoW player.

[Chunderpants]

I did it for you. Not sure if its any good for you as I have only recently started playing.

[Herald of Doom]

Another fun distraction when making Linux exercises :grin:

HoD

[grunty]

Thanks for re-opening the Link. and all responses are welcome, even if you have only been playing for 2-3 days. Thanks for responding everybody.

[ghazghull]

Nice questionnaire =P

[cyradis2003]

Nice questionnaire =P

I like that it was more open minded than most of the ones people try to throw at us. It seems a lot of the people doing studies on WOW have their conclusions already decided and are just looking for confirmation.

I play quite a bit, I enjoy playing, I am not adicted. I play with my fiance, he plays quite a bit, he enjoys playing and he is not adicted.

Neither one of us misses work, school, meals or social obligations to play. We have some good friends in the game and actually we met each other in game. We have lived together for nearly a year now and I think that getting to know each other slowly in the video game before meeting has helped build a stronger bond than if he had picked me up in a bar or something.

Too many of these surveys, questionaires and interviews would make a big deal out of finding a mate in a video game while for us it was pretty much the same as if we had met while enjoying any other mutual hobby. I especially liked the one taht asked about "Unusual romantic involvements due to the game" I think that one was BBC.

[grunty]

Thank you.

I am actually kind of annoyed at the normal standard of questionnaire too. This one is a bit more about how the problem of "addiction" as it is currently known is over-exadurated (sp). I use a much more specific definition of addiction which focuses on negative outcomes so that things like meeting romantic partners in the game will no longer be used as criteria for addiction as I have seen it used before. I am rebeling against the psychological establishment in my own special way :)

[cyradis2003]

Thank you.

I am actually kind of annoyed at the normal standard of questionnaire too. This one is a bit more about how the problem of "addiction" as it is currently known is over-exadurated (sp). I use a much more specific definition of addiction which focuses on negative outcomes so that things like meeting romantic partners in the game will no longer be used as criteria for addiction as I have seen it used before. I am rebeling against the psychological establishment in my own special way :)

Exactly! How can meeting someone really great be a negative? He has a good job, he is good to his mom, kind to animals and is a really wonderful fiance. Add to that the fact that we both enjoy similar hobbies - WOW and games in general, Movies - discussed in WOW, jokes - told many in WOW and food - ok, maybe not food ... he likes his a LOT spicier than I do.

Many of these "How addicted are you" folks would probably be fine with me meeting him in an online dating service but since we met while killing ghouls in WPL we must be freaks and addicted to games?

Ahh well, this is my own little soapbox. I finally got my parents and family to conceed that since he is so great and since they all liked him from the beginning before I told them how we met, they shouldn't hold our method of meeting against us. They have all stopped the teasing :grin:

[Cthonctic]

Heh, I did my thesis paper on a psychologial comparison of scientific VR environments and the WoW closed beta. Can I claim some pioneer prize for that? :wink:

Okay, doing the survey now.
Edit: A short and not overly complex but nicely and properly done online survey. It was my pleasure. :smiley:

Cheers.

[bbfahoc]

Survey completed. Seems you have setup and very nice one here. Goodluck with the study.

[sasja]

Link down.

[Athame]

I filled out your questionaire.

I'm interested to see how your addiction concept will correlate to the question that asks if the subject considers him/herself an addict. Because a lot of addicts will not think of themselves as such (self preservation) while people that aren't as addicted might have less of a problem labelling themselves as an addict.

It looks like you used the big five to assess personality. Are you assuming that how people score these traits when thinking of their online behaviour will reveal the same personality traits when asked about in a real life context? From the description on the last page of the questionaire, it seems like you are asking about real-life personality, but this isn't very clear, a lot of people might answer thinking about their online behaviour. What interests me personally is that I often found that players are 'different' ingame or online than in real life. Part of the allure of a virtual world is that you can be whoever you want to be. As such I'd be interested to see how the personality and the online behaviour correlate, preferably with a PCA on the data of the traits and then linking individual factors to online behaviour. I also wonder what model you have chosen, will addiction alter the online behaviour, or is addiction a result of a certain playstyle?


Please report your findings and good luck on your thesis!

[grunty]

Well Athame I too will be quite interested to see the corralations with that particualr question, I was lucky as that actually is part of the addiction measurement I am using (suprise suprise) so I could ask the question with a good reason and not have to write a paragraph in my thesis about why I chose to ask that question.

You mentionned the personality questionnaire there, I tried to make it as obvious as possible in the instructions that it was about your real life personality but unfortunatly as I did not have the ability to put text in bold with the particular program it is hard to draw peoples attention to that fact.

My research aims are somewhat different to what you have postulated above and I will post on this forum as soon as the survey is closed (possibly tommorow evening) and elaborate on my research aims. I unfortunatly cannot discuss them now because if I were to outline my exact research quetion it would influence any responses I get from now on.
(It is also interesting to note that I am considering doing a masters research course and one of the things I want to investigate is the issue you have outlined above... I just need to get this study done as groundwork...and for my degree :grin: )

Thank you again everyone for your responses and feedback, I really appreciate it and I am that my research seems to be catching peoples interest.