And We're Off... Again!

Study 4 is now up and running! It got launched Thursday of last week through all of my regular mediums - advertising on forums, e-mails, facebook, mailing lists, etc. This upcoming week we will release it on Mechanical Turk. I've never used something like this to recruit participants, so it will be interesting to see how it goes. I am lucky enough to have a fiance that is a computer programmer - so he has made this whole thing a lot easier! There was no easy way to import a survey from an external site into Mechanical Turk so he had to come up with a bit of code for me. He is the best of the best so it should all work fine when we launch it next week - but I guess we won't know until it is up! I just hope there isn't a glitch where someone can do the survey over and over and use up the set amount of money there is to pay participants!

We are hoping to get about 500 participants this round. The more the better, of course. Especially though as this is a replication study we need to NOT have the biased sample we ended up with before. I find it is getting harder to recruit participants these days... especially for a survey study that is as long as mine (takes about 30 minutes to complete). On the one hand I can understand as it is fairly long... but on the other hand I don't really understand how people could not want to contribute their mind to science. You grow up reading about different studies and the results of them... how could you pass up the opportunity to be one of those people who is counted in. One of the people who make up the average. I dunno, maybe I'm just weird cause I find that awesome... maybe that is why I have decided to pursue a career in science ;)

That is all for now!

*poof*

Writing, writing, writing....

It has been a while since an update! I am really slacking!

Well lets see... since my upgrade I have completed a 3rd study looking into sociability and online gaming. That study is now done and dusted and I am just finishing the write-up on it so my supervisor and I can submit it to be published. How awesome would that be? I think that the study itself is actually quite good and hopefully reviewers will think the same.

As far as progressing forward, it looks like the next study is going to be a replication of study 3. Due to the fact that my sample was insanely unbalanced the first time around, this will allow us to try and see if the same effects are visible in a balanced sample. If we find that it will not only strengthen our original findings, but also allow me to use this as a starting off point for my 5th study.

I am a little concerned that I am supposed to have 6 studies done by December... as the writing up of the dissertation process is supposed to start in Jan of next year. Having a replication study in the mix does make that a little more feasible but still... it's crunch time!

I am recently been accepted to present at two separate conferences in June - one in Stockholm and one in Germany. Sadly the one in Stockholm is insanely expensive (They want 450 pounds just for the registration fee!!) so I am going to have to pass on that one :( I am very excited for the Germany one though! Especially cause M. Griffiths and R. Bartle are the keynote speakers! Also super excited cause I get to present study 3 which I think is my best work to date. But the best part? Rex is going to fly out and spend a few days with me in Germany before the conference :)

That's all for now!

P.S. That vacation I talked about in my last post, was the best I ever had. American Idiot was unbelievably amazing.. Just unbelievable.