@Tim
BSoD believes differently (and it's already been answered), so you may be on to something. But in terms of fandom hubs, we didn't think that KYM would register compared to other hubs.
Given how many respondents there are and how people feel like "I didn't put down anything, because you didn't have Dr. Whooves and your mother" is a proper response that I can actually code (Heads up: I won't try if I have to think about how to code it and it may not be considered in the analysis anyway), I wanted to avoid as many open-ended answers as possible. I had…issues with various things such as erroneous responses and spelling. Because there are an infinite number of ways incorrectly spelling something or having a typo, it's not feasible with our sample size.
But if it turns out to be that many respondents say other, then we'll have to figure out where those other sites are and/or if there are smaller hubs but a great number of them that make up a large proportion of the community.
@Mack
I'd go even further and say that I don't want to put a number on that. I'm very deliberate to prevent mistakes. In fact, I started the recruitment a little too soon, and I made an obvious and terrible error (omitting Dr. Hooves/Whooves in an item where I anticipated him to be chosen very, very often. I ruined that question. It won't be usable, but I can't change it without asking people to retake it.)
However, there is a responsibility to the respondents, the FiM community, and those interested in the results to get them out in a reasonably timely manner. That could be four weeks after we stop collecting data (which I highly doubt.) That could be closer to eight weeks (which sounds about right.) It could be in December.
I should mention the analysis will be more detailed than last time. It won't just be a matter of collecting data and showing graphs, tables, and statistical analyses. That wouldn't take four weeks if we (read: I, Verbose) buckled down and did it over weekends and evenings.
It'll include asking each other about each item, each analysis, and their implications will take time. So that's 38 items and a lot more tests. It will include more background information, anecdotal considerations, theoretical basis for speculations from our fields and perhaps outside of any of ours (ideally)…
tl;dr: I'd like to be done before November.
@Doctor Hobo (and to whomever takes the questionnaire later on)
I appreciate your input. I really do. But you probably shouldn't have guessed.
The reason I say that, is because guesses on a questionnaire like this isn't what we're looking to analyze. We worked on wording a lot so that people could be sure that the answer they gave was true about themselves. If it's potentially misunderstood, then that would be getting data of a sort that is different from what we expect.
However, it's just one item. As long as it's not being misunderstood by a sizable portion of respondents, then it's perfectly fine. We expect it to occur.
I probably should have worded the instructions to say that you should skip the question if you didn't understand the question or if you felt uncomfortable with answering it. It's something I'll have to keep in mind for the future.
@Twins
From the last survey, most respondents chose one faith, even though they had the option to choose others along with their only actual choice. Furthermore, the way we present the results can come out to be a bit odd. When you have the chance to choose multiple responses, the descriptive either have to show all of the chosen combinations (which is too many to reasonably show), or it would not total up to be 100%. It's hard to graph that, and it's hard to conceive in a table when the same respondent could be represented in three or four different categories.
We understood that some people are often of a religious affiliation culturally but are also Atheist or Agnostic (e.g. Judaism and Atheism.) However, we felt that those nuances, although crucially important to the individual, would not be the focus our this survey.
@Quantum
See Twilitlord.
The community will change over time, and we'd like to see those changes in a cross-section. Also, as we learn more about the fandom, we have new questions to ask of them. We also make mistakes in the creation of the questionnaire, and we'd like to make sure that everything is being understood and that people can answer as truthfully as possible while being feasible to us.
@X-singular
Yeah, that's a legitimate concern.
Many people say (and accurately so,) that they don't frequent some other large sites for pony content. If we determine that there may be a lot of erroneous responses on sites, then we simply wouldn't recruit on those sites anymore. (Having select qualitative focus groups would likely yield the same themes and trends. And it would be much easier (although not easy) to analyze. There is responsibility on us as researchers to do good science and to be unbiased, but there is also a responsibility on the sample as well to be truthful.
I know the Internet is a different place for a survey, especially when it is embedded in Web Culture and a sense of anonymity, but I won't intentionally expose the survey to a community that has shown itself to have motives outside of the survey's aims.
Several respondents said they wanted an opportunity to respond, and they didn't see it when it was presented here, on EqD, and on DeviantArt. We think they were absolutely correct. This is their opportunity.
@Cake
Yes.
In my opinion, we wanted to focus on how people perceived Rule 34. We did not want people to consider sexual activity among characters who are obviously presented as minors. That would introduce opinions of another matter: pedophilia. Even as objective researchers, that is something that we would hope that no one believes is right and would not tolerate in the least. And at the very least, being completely objective, we believed that it would skew the results further to disliking R34 than what is actually the case for our specific interests.
That is a good question though. Thanks.
@Fifths
opspe answered the first part exactly as I would.
As for the attraction items, those are generally new. We certainly have more questions regarding ponies and sexual feelings than the last survey did. However, that also means that they are new to us.
Perhaps I would run more qualitative analysis before the next survey (yes, another one…but not now) to make sure that people have a chance to understand what people want to know and if they can respond without much confusion on what each item is asking. A pilot before the pilot run, if you will.
As for what people came to like about the show, that would be interesting to ask about. It's something we'd have to figure out how we'd incorporate into the survey. At 26 items, people seemed to say that there could have been more items, so we decided to add a few more questions of interest to us and to the community.
What I'm reading now in comments is that some people feel that this was a bit time consuming/required a bit of effort. I would not want to add many more items unless we removed some others. Respondents don't receive any direct compensation, but we receive many results. We don't want to overburden people.
I can take several surveys. I like them. But most people are not like that, especially considering the topic area of some of the questions.
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