Request for Research Participation

iwasnotshadowbanned · 2014-11-28T02:10:28+00:00

There have been numerous examples of people purposely screwing up data on surveys from reddit and especially on this subreddit.

notnotnotfred · 2014-11-28T02:42:52+00:00

by /u/mr_Survey_monster

it's important to note that surveys like this are frequent and the responses usually unrepresentative

(1) they are so frequent and so frequently abandoned that long-timers see them as background noise and rarely bother with them.

They are therefore unrepresentative of long-timers.

http://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/26ynjs/we_often_see_that_its_not_as_obvious_to_a_lot_of/

(2) They also capture the thoughts of the few people who respond to them in the short time that they are (1) seen and (2) have not yet been replaced with the next survey.

they are therefore very poor at capturing a sizeable share of responses.

They are therefore unrepresentative of short-timer thought as well.

http://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/26hbc0/meta_proposal_designate_a_single_day_of_the_week/

http://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/26wbol/reddit_survey_what_are_the_issues_important_to/

(3) Timing of the survey can also massage the data: just time the survey event for times when you know that certain time zones or are more likely to be browsing, such as the noon CST "on break for lunch" crowd, or the 3pm EST "home from junior high school" crowd, et ctera.

** note the timing of this posting, in particular. 8:40 PM CST on Thanksgiving day

They are therefore unrepresentative on the basis of of (possible) targeted timing of the "survey."

Even surveys that appear to have a fair number of responses and that appear to have been given attended for a sufficient survey period (such as a month) may be influenced by outsiders, as happened here:

http://www.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/22tswa/demographics_survey_results/

they also will likely have been superseded by "newer" surveys.

(4) They also are easily manipulable by outside people, such as described and exemplified below:

My original plan with this survey was to submit the same survey to /r/Feminism, wait until the responses petered out, and then analyze and compare the data. This was not going to be used to prove anything, as there are many biases which could very well have an effect on responses, but rather it was an exercise simply conducted out of curiosity. Unfortunately, it appears that the /r/MensRights survey was brigaded with bots, or maybe even some very dedicated trolls. Regardless, the results for the survey of this sub are clearly compromised. I apologize for the disappointment. Here are the results of the /r/feminism survey. Frankly, I was going to make my own nice result graphics but the whole brigading thing has left me disappointed with a lack of motivation for this thing anymore. I fixed the "issues" graphic though.

http://i.imgur.com/Ghmg7XK.png

Factors which could potentially cause bias in the responses include, but are not limited to:

1) Survey was not a random sample (data may not be representative of the sub as a whole)

2) Possibility of individuals completing survey with the intent to skew the data

the /u/mr_Survey_Monster will be dedicated to posting data very much like this, so people can access it readily. Please reference it often in response to future "survey" posts.

(5) The subscriber count at the originl posting of this data writing is over 91,000. The number of responses will usually be self-selected and comparatively few.

So don't take surveys of /r/mensrights here seriously. We sure as hell don't.

ftr, I posted this literally yesterday on another survey attempt.

SarcastiCock · 2014-11-28T03:21:55+00:00

Hello again. You're introducing yourself as if you've never been here before, but you were here last week. What's with that?

I skimmed the questions in the survey. As far as I can make out, they're the same as last week's questions.

SarcastiCock · 2014-11-28T03:37:27+00:00

I don't think many want to do your survey because it's poorly designed and easily manipulated by trolls.

notnotnotfred · 2014-11-28T04:11:19+00:00

In view of the comments here, particularly those which explain how the survey could be used against us, I have unstickied the post.

I have asked OP to respond to the various critical comments posted here. If he fails to do so in an adequate manner, I will suggest to other mods that we don't sticky the post again.

nicemod

Title	Request for Research Participation
Author	letsdoresearch
Upvotes	1
Comments	6
Date	November 28, 2014 1:33 AM UTC (11 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/2nmlwh/request_for_research_participation/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/request-for-research-participation.992849 https://theredarchive.com/post/992849

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