Results of our non-profit projectFollow

Hello everyone,

thank you once again to all who helped with the non-profit project led forward by the German University of Dusseldorf, whose aim it was to create a diagnostic questionnaire which does not confuse normal, engaged play with a clinically conspicuous use of MMORPGs. I’ve now come back to (finally!) present you the results of the aforementioned study, which have been made possible by your help:

191 anglophone players took part in this study, of which 166 were male. The players’ age lied in between 13 and 56 years (24 years on average). At the time of the study, participants stated they played 2 MMORPGs on average, having played their primary MMORPG for 3 years on average. The mean number of hours per week spent on playing MMORPGs was 25; the standard deviation was 21 hours, which shows that, regarding the hours of gameplay, players tend to differ notably from each other.

High (Pearson) correlations (statistical relations) could be detected between the questionnaire score and the weekly amount of hours spent on playing MMORPGs (r = .53, p < .001) as well as between the questionnaire score and the relative amount of spare time spent on MMORPGs (r = .51, p < .001). r describes the correlation, p is the level of statistical significance, according to which an effect can be described as statistically relevant if p is lower than .05. In this case, both correlations are statistically significant. In summary it can be said, therefore, that the more (spare) time was spent on playing MMORPGs, the higher were the obtained questionnaire scores.

The obtained questionnaire scores lie in between 19 and 95, with an average of 40. The score distribution is “shifted to the left”, which means that most participants rather rejected the questionnaire items and obtained a rather low score. On a scale from 1 (does not apply at all) to 5 (fully applies), the average answer lies at 2.12. As a conclusion, the bigger part of participants can most likely not be referred to as “dependent” on MMORPGs.

The ability of questionnaire items to distinguish “excessive” from “non-excessive” players (the first should clearly agree, the latter disagree) lies in between .46 and .70 (corrected item-scale correlations), which is to be rated as high discriminatory power. That’s gratifying because it was our goal to develop a questionnaire which clearly discriminates between these two groups and does not, for example, wrongly categorize people as “addicted”, when they enjoy playing, and play a lot, without having any problems.

The reliability of our questionnaire, which describes the accuracy of its measures, lies at .91 (Cronbach’s alpha) and therefore, it is to be rated as high.

The principal component analysis results in one dominant main factor (eigenvalue: 7.31, explained variance: 38%), which indicates that just one common construct underlies all items of the questionnaire. In this case, this is the “clinically conspicuous use of MMORPGs”.

The 90th percentile was used as a preliminary benchmark in order to classify a “critical use”. In this case, it lies at a score of approximately 58. However such a “cut-off score” should not be misinterpreted as a definite criterion for addiction. This criterion is rather to be a first reference point and make an objective comparison possible. The German version of the questionnaire is currently being tested in a clinical setting.
The questionnaire is still available online: http://www.piaorcs.uni-duesseldorf.de/25questions/
Further results will also be published online on the above mentioned website.

Once again thanks a lot for your help! Without the contribution of the player community, such a project would not have been possible.

Sabine Breuing
(sabine.breuing at uni-duesseldorf.de)

The original thread. lulz

That's not how science works.

It only takes 3 days to collect the data...

Then you have to badger the statistician to analyze it, that's usually a month or two there. He'll give you back a mound of numbers, none of which mean anything to you. So you have to badger him again to meet with you to explain things. That part takes a month, and you don't really learn much from the condescending little prick in the end. However you do get him to agree to write up his methods at least. It'll take him 2 more months to get you that, in the mean time you attend two conferences where you present your initial findings in poster form. Here you get to interact with other people who also don't understand what their stat folks are telling them either. You go get beer with them after hours and ***** about how none of you know what's going on. It's what we like to call a "collaboration" in the field.

Finally you start writing the paper. This means spending days reading other people's work and trying to figure out if there's anything left that is unique about your project in the year plus it's taken to get to this point. Not only that, but there's another approaching grant deadline, and you need to get your submission in fast, because it's obvious that this stupid survey your summer help came up with isn't going to fund your career. In retrospect you have no idea why this is the study that got funded in the first place, but you really could care less about that at this point because you have a lecture in 15 minutes and those ungrateful lumps of fat expect to be educated or something.

Finally after a couple more weeks of late nights, dealing with clueless co-authors, ridiculous submission guidelines from our journal of choice, and spotty wifi coverage you send away your work and sleep for a couple of days. Later on, after a couple of re-submissions, your work is finally rejected because one of the reviewers didn't feel the statistical test used was the correct one. Adding insult to injury the condescending prick who analyzed your data is on sabbatical and couldn't be contacted to address the reviewer's concerns properly.

In the end you re-submit to some no-name journal that's about 4 years old, and willing to publish just about anything to keep themselves in business. You don't care because at this point you just need some progress, any progress to show on that grant renewal, and don't really care what that is. Anyway the paper is accepted almost immediately, and despite the fact the research is out of date, largely discredited, and an indecipherable mess at best, you feel a great satisfaction for a brief fleeting moment before your colleague drops off a stack of grad school applications for you to review.

Yay Science!





Edited, May 22nd 2012 9:45am by someproteinguy

The humanities are such ******** anyway. Two years and a lot of time/money/effort later, and we get a bunch of pointless statistics that are of no value to anyone.

No, that only feels like it takes two years.

If you can't be bothered to read how do you expect to learn anything!

Fine.

TL:DR =

You all are illiterate. This was a study by a German university, where presumably the majority of respondents were Germans replying in German. The OP is reporting on the ANGLOPHONE portion of the study: the participants whose first language is English, of which they had about 200. (I presume they decided that "we" would be most interested in the findings on the English speakers.) We do not know if they collected data from Francophone correspondents, any other European language respondents, or indeed any of the many Asian, Middle Eastern and African languages.

This is all very fascinating, but what does it mean? I've read the original post a dozen times now and I still don't understand it. Granted, it's 4AM and I'm sorta drunk, but still, it looks so complicated. It tickles my brain.

Can someone please translate it into basic English? Maybe summarize it a bit?

A slightly underwhelming revelation then.

Wow, I'm a douche. And this is still on my front page. I am dissapoint.

Oh oh oh! You forgot the part about how some of them play more than others.

There's a lot of science to do

/Glados