4 November 2009

Help a Canberra student out?

| researchify
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Hi all!

As part of my PhD in psychology at the Australian National University, I’m running an online study on women’s understanding of health promotion messages.

And I would love it if you could participate in my project!

ALL WOMEN ARE WELCOME who are 18 years or over.

Participation involves watching a video and answering some questions about it. It will take approximately 20-30 minutes to complete.

If you would like to participate in this study, please proceed to the following web address:

http://research.millisecond.com/anu/healthpromotion.web

(unfortunately, the software doesn’t work on Macs or Linux)

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Pommy bastard2:15 pm 05 Nov 09

And I would love it if you could participate in my project!

ALL WOMEN ARE WELCOME who are 18 years or over.

Participation involves watching a video and answering some questions about it.

I tried that one once… No luck though

Researchify; did you run focus groups to assess your survey prior to going live? Don’t be too disheartened by the negative feedback above – it just means that perhaps you need to modify your survey options to ensure that others are not equally as offended.

Sorry, but uou do realise, don’t you, that in this particular forum, by inviting women to participate, you may well have ratbags posing as women – and no way to tell?

researchify said :

The complex nature of the experiment (for instance, random assignment and branching) means that I need quite powerful software – certainly more than a basic survey package.

More complex than php and/or flash? You can create an entire game/movie/application with flash. Surely if you work in a ‘lab’, theres some people there who can whip up an entire php/survey site for you in 10min, and you could probably even buy them a 6-pack if you really want to feel warm and fuzzy for paying for the software.. check out the ‘backyard blitz’ thread for more thoughts (mates and beer), then you can spend ‘a large chunk of research funds’ on actual research, rather than giving money to someone for something that seemingly doesnt work anyway.

2 and a half meg application? Give me a break. Not only do you want Windows users only, but you want the ones on fast internet connections who are happy to download and execute unknown apps.

Also, your informed consent statement should be on the web page -preceding- the app launcher.

And, as far as I got through the offensive survey, there is no reason why you needed such a complicated piece of software to do the job. A normal website with a survey engine (i.e. simple radio buttons and a database back-end) and embedded media files would have done perfectly well.

As far as the offensiveness of your survey is concerned, I’m sorry, but I don’t HAVE an “ideal weight”, so long as I’m healthy. That -is- my ideal weight – I’m healthy and strong, ergo, I’m good. And not having the option to declare something like that – having to decide what my “ideal weight” is, down to the kilo – certainly shows the bias of this survey. As does the ridiculous pictures of a very white-bread looking female figure that we were supposed to click on to show what our body looked like. Again, with no “none of the above” option (you didn’t have one for huge tits, no belly to speak of and big thighs).

As for the disingenuous statement that it’s about “looking at a video and asking questions about it”, no, it’s about assessing body image and answering specific questions on -your- body image and actual weight. And that should be said up front. Again, -before- you have to waste bandwidth on running a dodgy application (which errored for me in ActiveX; luckily I could figure out the java version).

So, given all that, -some- (maybe even a majority) of women who buy into the usual (or, if “usual” has been judged on surveys anything like your own, I know have doubts) stuff about how we’re supposed to perceive our bodies might complete it. I know I’m possibly “atypical”, but you’re not going to capture outliers like me, who thinks that BMI is bullshit (more precisely, completely misused) or people with about as much patience as I have (most of whom would have already given up with the ActiveX failure).

Raging Tempest6:29 pm 04 Nov 09

The video wouldn’t load on my pc. Looks like the software issues go beyond Mac & Linux. Are there any video requirements?

The complex nature of the experiment (for instance, random assignment and branching) means that I need quite powerful software – certainly more than a basic survey package. Obviously this reduces the number of people who are willing to do the study (some people don’t like plug-ins) but it’s still easier to recruit online than getting people into the lab!

Thanks to those who have done the study! 🙂

Isnt the whole purpose of a web-based system, that it is system independant as long as you have a web browser? What ‘software’ are you using that youve paid a large amount of your ‘research funds’ for, that ‘plays a video then asks a couple of questions’? It sounds like you got pretty ripped off, and should maybe investigate flash.
(Linux user)

Woody Mann-Caruso3:58 pm 04 Nov 09

What’s wrong with a link to a YouTube video and a Survey Monkey link? Install software on my PC my arse.

Yep, I must say I was pretty upset, having spent a large chunk of my research funds on the software, to discover it doesn’t work on Macs and Linux! The manufacturer wasn’t very forthcoming with that information! I’m just hoping there are enough PCs users left out there that I can still get enough data.

(unfortunately, the software doesn’t work on Macs or Linux)

FAIL.

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