eqotto wrote:
I do not believe my research is redundant, as there are currently few published articles about MMORPG's in my discipline, though research is now beginning to be published at a more frequent rate.
See... Here is the problem. For the last 4 years or so, we get about one or two (sometimes more) posts every month that are virtually identical to yours, all stating they are PhD students doing a study of MMORPGs. They all quote a lack of published information on the area as the reason why they chose to perform the study.
Now. One has to wonder why, if there are that many studies being performed, there are still so few actual published papers on the topic. There are several possible conclusions:
1. The person asking for the information is lying. There are plenty of papers on the topic, but why not add one more, right? This means that the study likely is a waste of our time since the data is already available.
2. The person asking for the information is misinformed. This is worse actually since it implies that the person running the study is not only annoying, but is also incompetant in their chosen field.
3. There's a whole lot of studies that have been done, but very few have been published yet. Ok. So what's the incentive for us to fill out your study? If the last 50 studies all resulted in exactly 3 papers being published, then our odds of having any effect on the field is pretty small. At the very least, when looked at in terms of "time spent to result obtained", the lack of publications despite a *huge* number of actual studies and questionaires kinda makes us unwilling to do yet another.
4. The person asking for the information is really just collecting market research information, and has no intention of ever "publishing" anything, since that would reduce the value of the research to the firms that sponsored it. This is in fact, the most likely explanation for reason 3, and is yet more reason for us not to participate. If you get paid for gathering the information, then why on earth should we give that information to you for free? Yeah. I'm being mercenary, but that's just the way things are.
So which is it? We are regulars on this site. Some of us have been posting here for years. Do you really think that *we* don't know how often these surveys are conducted? It's actually funny, when you think about it. Do your professors actually give you a script to use when posting your surveys on the internet? Because every single one uses virtually the exact same wording that yours does. Do you really think we wouldn't notice that?...
I'll give you some free advice. Try doing something original for your PhD. This is *not* original. It's not even close...
Edited, Tue Feb 17 20:43:06 2004 by gbaji