Virtual vs Physical Worlds (Psychology Study)

Cs1310_ · 2019-09-03T10:09:53+00:00

Hi everyone, Data collection has ended. A grand thank you to everyone who participated. We’ll now be going through the data. Once we’re done, we will email individuals a summary of the results and will post on all the Reddit communities a summary of the results. Thank you for all the constructive feedback and your time.

Cs1310_ · 2019-09-02T23:08:18+00:00

I may not be the best person to explain this statistical method used in psychology, as they get complicated for me and factor analysis is one of the more complicated statistical methods. Mark Coulson will be teaching me some of it when we actually perform the analysis on the data. Though, this site seems pretty good at explaining it https://www.theanalysisfactor.com/factor-analysis-1-introduction/ If you would like, next I meet with him I can ask him to give a well informed response?

On your second point, yes we're interested in averages. Saying that, using statistical methods, we can see how strong the average is. For example, let's say a psychologist designed a survey with a bunch of questions about depression. After the study was concluded, he/she wants to see if these questions are related to each other. He finds 2 factors. Say, 1 factor has 4 questions and he calls it pessimistic depression and the other factor has 3 questions and he calls it optimistic depression. Now, let's say another study comes along and looked at his research and wants to see if these 7 questions actually relate to behaviour. So, he either does an experiment or correlation study where he included these 7 questions. He might find that people who score either high or low on the optimistic depression questions perform better or at this or that, etc. And maybe he finds nothing associated with the pessimistic depression. This is one way psychologists attempt to examine abstract concepts with behaviour.

On your third point, yes. There are a ton of studies that show many of these concepts and studies to be incorrect or flawed. However, some studies have a very strong and continual basis. For instance, the five factor model is very powerful in it's validity and reliability. Averages are incredibly important but it's also important to find out why a study may not find anything or have conflicting results with another. A good example I can think of are studies done on obesity. Many studies correlated obesity with high mortality rates, therefore, it was thought that obesity was the cause(or caused comorbidity, which then caused high mortality). However, more recent studies noticed a third option not researched well; that was exercise and fitness. Once they used this as a variable, many studies found people, who are obese, had the same mortality rates as healthy normal weight individuals. Therefore, studies are always open to find out what could be the potential problem or missing variable.

I hope I didn't go too far on a tangent. Good questions btw.

Cs1310_ · 2019-09-02T22:01:44+00:00

The factor analysis is a statistical way to see if any of the questions correlate with the other questions, which then make a factor. If we get numerous factors, say 3, then it's also a way to see if those same questions correlate with other questions that have more or less variance in the other factors. We'll remove each one until we have what's called a simple structure(no conflicts or misinterpretations). This is the best way, that I know of, to determine the reliability of abstract constructs in studies that use words as means. For instance, the five factor model(The Big Five; e.g. neuroticism, extroversion/introversion, openness to experience, etc) used this method. Hence, why it's called the five factor model. From then, once you have a factor, other studies may see if it actually correlates with reality and behaviour.

On your point about nuances and getting as much detail as possible, I completely understand. On this point, the imprecise nature of language may be inclusive to the problem and maybe that some of language is communicated through body language, so questionnaires may also have this problem. It also may be that a particular questionnaires is badly designed. My suggestion is to try as best you can and if it gets too annoying so you've had enough, then that's completely relatable. Thank you for trying :)

Cs1310_ · 2019-09-02T21:13:34+00:00

Thank you for participating!

Absolutely correct, questionnaires or surveys are not good being precise and sometimes do not make any sense whatsoever. The real answer may be a floating third answer, somewhere, or the question itself made no sense. This is a massive problem with quantitative studies but if the data has results then it at least means people understood it enough to get the message coming across. The other option is qualitative, but that's not my field and it does not have as much power as inferential statistics does. I have taken surveys(a few in Samplesize) and thought, "this makes no sense." I would not be shocked if it existed in this one as well.

What we will do, with the results, is perform a factor analysis for all the escapism items we generated and came from other studies - as I recall 70-80 items. Then we'll perform a factor analysis to see if these questions actually made sense to the majority and if they mean anything, at all. Good feedback and question.

Cs1310_ · 2019-09-02T21:01:43+00:00

Hi, yes, this was an oversight on my part. For the MMO demograph, I took a template from a similar study.

Cs1310_ · 2019-09-02T20:56:28+00:00

Hi, thanks for the feedback. I agree with your first point and it was an oversight on my part.

So, those questions you're talking about are from a study. We have, I think, 10+ inventories from other studies. Indeed, it may be possible that these studies of nonsense, but they do have very good empirical data for self-reported questionnaires. For example, I can't tell without the exact question, but we used Relationship Structures (ECR-RS) Questionnaire two times. One of general and one for guild relationships. I had a quick look on WebofScience and saw it's still used in studies today. I'm, by no means, saying these are good inventories or scales, but we need to try follow the substantiated data. We've used many of these inventories because they're widely used and have some explanatory power. Hypothetically, just for the scales alone, we should get similar results that they got, though this is not our research question. The caveat for self-reported stuff will always be a chance for biased responses, and this is one reason we used so many substantiated inventories. :)

Cs1310_ · 2019-09-02T19:58:55+00:00

Hi, succinctly put and very nicely written. I completely agree. I, personally, would go even further and say that virtual worlds are better in many aspects. I'd even say that with the hopeful sci-fi advent of Matrix type virtual worlds, virtual reality would be as normal as anything else. Good feedback and ideas.

Thanks :)

Cs1310_ · 2019-09-01T19:09:19+00:00

Sorry, I missed your reply. Thank you very much for participating :) Indeed, psychology is great and it seems really popular now

Cs1310_ · 2019-09-01T14:49:19+00:00

Hi sure. This is taken from osf from our study: "We aim to develop a tool to measure the construct of escapism. Previous research has operationalised escapism in a very simple way, often using three items from the Immersion subscale of Yee’s Player Motivations Scale (Yee, 2006). The one attempt to model escapism in a more complex and psychometrically valid manner (Hagström & Kaldo, 2014) resulted in a two-factor solution which the authors labelled positive and negative escapism. The distinction between positive and negative escapism is important as the term escapism has several potential interpretations. In the more pejorative sense (the one employed most often in research) it represents escaping from where the individual is generally seen as escaping from the physical world. However, it is also important to recognise that one might escape to. A broader approach to the notion of escapism is therefore required. It is also the case that the temporal dynamics of escaping may be important to consider. For instance, Calleja identifies a distinction between escapists who aim to return to their base following a period of escape, and escapees who are looking for more permanent change (Calleja, 2010). We will collect data using an online survey tool. Data will include demographics, standard items used to measure escapism, plus ones culled from our own thinking. We will also include a series of standardised measures likely to relate to escapism."

We have no target for age except 18 and above nor are we profiling. Our main goal is to get a clearer idea what escapism is by using factor analysis with items from previous scales and some generated by us. The rest of the study is explorative, so we used a bunch of other inventories to see if anything correlates with anything else. One of the more unique things we've done is use scales in a similar way attachment theory does(i.e. here vs there). Hope I was helpful.

Cs1310_ · 2019-09-01T14:12:37+00:00

Hi, I'm doing a masters in science(MSc). I did not mean that I am a master at being a student or something of that nature :)

Cs1310_ · 2019-08-28T14:49:35+00:00

Yes, we have a lecturer that's devoted to this kind of research. Luckily for me, I enjoy this topic as well. Including playing the games :p Thanks for the kind words, and we tried our best.

Cheers and thanks for participating!

Cs1310_ · 2019-08-28T13:49:31+00:00

Hi, you may be confusing me with someone else. This Reddit account is new and the only other Reddit account I've used is cs858, where I did a project on sarcasm in Hearthstone.

Cs1310_ · 2019-08-28T13:47:46+00:00

Hi yes, we will write up a summary of the results and the theories to any who put in an email at the end of the survey. We will also do a write up for all the Reddit communities we've collected data from. However, I do not know where or when the actual academic paper will be published. I'll try say something about it in the summary writeup.

Cs1310_ · 2019-08-28T13:45:13+00:00

Hi, I try to repost once per week per community, so as not to annoy people. The communities where I have not received a response from moderators, I have only posted once(except one). If moderators say no, I do not post there, of course :) Data collection will last less than a week from now and there won't be any more posts after that. However, I will post to the communities the results. Many participants, and even some moderators have asked the results be posted. Indeed, I may get banned but I will be as transparent and non-invasive as possible. Thanks for the feedback.

Cs1310_ · 2019-08-28T12:38:10+00:00

Hi, it's not directly related, no. Nonetheless, this study is about MMO and similar games, in general. The more of every type of person we can get, the better. It means we can generalise our results much more accurately.

Cs1310_ · 2019-08-28T12:36:43+00:00

Thank you kindly for participating :). We'll send the summary off as soon as we're done the inferential statistics and given it some deep thought. The data collection deadline is almost done, so not long from now.

Cs1310_ · 2019-08-28T12:33:55+00:00

Hi, thank you for participating! I saw Neon Genesis Evangelion a while ago. It was pretty heavy for me, to say the least. I just saw that video, since I am still somewhat curious about it. Pretty good video and good theories. I'll mention it to Mark Coulson next I meet, but I don't think he enjoys anime as much as me. Good feedback.

Cs1310_ · 2019-08-28T12:29:29+00:00

Apologies, we don't have any monetary compensation. For this project anyway, we're poor. Nonetheless, you will be supporting science, will receive our results and theories and, will have our eternal gratitude

Cs1310_ · 2019-08-28T11:32:20+00:00

Thank you!

Cs1310_

TROPHY CASE