EL research, if you want to participate, post here

[Researcher]

Friday, November 14 will be the last day to sign up here on the forum thread! So when you're reading it, that will mean either "today" or "tomorrow" depending on which time zone you're in.

Ulla Bunz

 

In case you don't want to browse through the entire thread but have additional questions, I have provided answers and information in the following places in this thread:

page 1, post 9

page 2, post 35

page 3, post 45

page 4, post 68

page 5, post 91

page 6, post 106

page 7, post 124

page 8, post 160

page 9, post 164

 

I'll continue to update this list as needed.

[mortsllehm]

1. I want to participate

2. mortsllehm

3. tricky question *looking down* I am male \o/

[Mrs_DrtySouth]

DrtySouth and I sent forum PM to assist. We are too old to post our ages. lol

Edited November 15, 2008 by Mrs_DrtySouth

[Lord Hoz]

I would love to participate, LordHOZ

[kibora]

1. okay

2. kibora

3. male

[Soldus]

- in

- Soldus

- male

- interested in results

 

 

good success with your study!

[Researcher]

My research team and I are still working on coding more than 2000 forum posts, but here are some preliminary results based on the skill level data alone. More (and in more detail) will be reported as we get results. For those that understand basic statistics, all results reported here are significant at p < .05 or lower, with many results showing significance at p < .001 (For the non-statisticians, the lower the p value, the more "sure" I can be of my results). Also, of course I did not deal with a random sample, but with a group of volunteers. Thus, these results cannot and should not be generalized too much, especially not to gaming communities outside of EL. (For the stats people, final results will include power analyses and eta squares.) Remember that these analyses were done at the group level, so, your individual preferences might be different, but overall this is what the participants "told" me through their data.

 

Some results:

1) Men focus on attack/defense significantly more than do women.

2) Men are also more likely than women to focus on magic and manu. Women are more likely than men to focus on tailoring.

3) Pretty much all the skills are related to (correlated with) each other (even when applying the Bonferroni adjustment), meaning, if you're likely to level one, you're also likely to level another. The only exceptions are with attack, defense, and magic as none of these three skills are related to tailoring, meaning, if you're likely to level a/d/magic, you're less likely to level tailoring.

4) The more likely you are to focus on attack/defense, the more likely you also are to focus on ranging. This does not change whether you're male or female.

5) While the result of number 4 might not surprise many of you, the following result may indeed surprise some. I had several conversations with players that argued about the close connection between magic and a/d. While magic and a/d are related (if you level one, you're likely to level the other), neither predicts the other (non-significant regression). In other words, one doesn't cause the other to go up. All the heavy a/d trainers are probably ready to argue with me right now, but this result is most likely due to the fact that there are many people that level magic without leveling a/d (the healers! ) as well as magic points earned via teleporting etc.

 

More results "snippets" to come in the near future! If you indicated you want results, I will send you a forum pm when the final report is made.

Edited January 26, 2009 by Researcher