[Survey] Investigating Internet Gaming Disorder...is it a thing? What's related to it? Prize draw fo - General

Hi All, I'm currently completing research into the newly proposed Internet Gaming Disorder as part of my PhD. We're essentially looking into whether it exists as a disorder, what it might be associated with if it does exist and if there's a difference between problematic and non-problematic gaming behavior. We're interested to hear from anyone who plays games, the survey talks about "Internet games" in the wording of the questions, but by that we mean [U]any video games[/U] from candy crush to WoW. If you're interested, I would really appreciate your time in completing the survey. It will take [B]around 20 minutes to complete[/B] and there is a follow up survey I'll send out in two weeks that takes [B]5 minutes[/B]. As an incentive for people to complete the survey, anyone who leaves their e-mail address at the end of the second survey is able to go in the running for a $100 Amazon voucher. The [B][U]survey link is here:[/U][/B] [url]https://curtin.asia.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_3ZPe9DSjj2jOcXH[/url] Really appreciate any support or comments you might have about the survey too, even if you hated it, that's completely fine too. Thanks!

Done. Was pretty repetitive and long, though. Also seemed a bit.. Biased to me? Kept making me thinking i was taking a drug test rather then a survey.

Overly long, it felt like I was answering the same questions several times, and some of them seemed a tad biased where I couldn't really give a correct/accurate answer.

[QUOTE=windows098;47346293]Done. Was pretty repetitive and long, though. Also seemed a bit.. Biased to me? Kept making me thinking i was taking a drug test rather then a survey.[/QUOTE] Thanks for that! The repetitiveness is because we're testing out a few measures at once, but appreciate your patience with that. In terms of the bias, the measures in the survey are primarily aimed at a clinical sample. I'm testing a community sample across the general population, so I can understand how you might see it that way. That being said, the way we interpret the results will be very objective, I'm interested in the results speaking for themselves and am genuinely interested to see what they support. Whether that be in favour, against or somewhere in between in terms of whether Internet Gaming Disorder is a thing, what might be related to it (in terms of other disorders) and if there are are distinct patterns. Again, thanks for the feedback! It's all helpful.

Some of the questions do seem to go against good question design. For example: "Over the last 2 weeks, how often have you been bothered by any of the following problems" Has no options for "Every Day" or "Not at all".

Those last questions seemed a bit random to me. And what am I supposed to do if my mother's name is shorter than 4 letters?

[QUOTE=onebit;47346542]What are you studying? This survey is loaded to the brim. [editline]18th March 2015[/editline][/QUOTE] Like I said, we're interested in testing the proposed Internet Gaming Disorder and potentially related disorders. The measures used to assess those have been fairly well tested in terms of reliability and validity. Not sure why you're pointing out that question as loaded. It's fairly clear what it's asking.

Out of interest, are you a gamer yourself? It wouldn't surprise me if the answer is no, most of these questions sound like they're posed from the perspective of someone who has little experience with games. As someone else said, you could pretty much replace "gaming" with drug X/Y/Z and it'd make a lot more sense

[QUOTE=Morbo!!!;47346649]Out of interest, are you a gamer yourself? It wouldn't surprise me if the answer is no, most of these questions sound like they're posed from the perspective of someone who has little experience with games. As someone else said, you could pretty much replace "gaming" with drug X/Y/Z and it'd make a lot more sense[/QUOTE] Yep, I'm a gamer, which is why I said I'm interested to see what the results might suggest one way or the other and of course why I chose to research this as my PhD. I'm also aware that a lot of the tests, like I said before, come from a very clinical perspective of things. Which is something I'll be critical of, particularly the language (i.e. if general feedback is that there's a negative perspective, which is what I'm hearing) and I'll take that all into account when interpreting the results and discussing the findings.

[QUOTE=onebit;47347486]You're giving the subject two options; either the subject is disordered or unsure.[/QUOTE] Well, there's four options. The first providing an opportunity for those who are unsure or don't recall and three options that ask about the degree of feeling that way. If you're not bothered, then intuitively you would answer with the first option right? You picked it up and I'm sure the majority would. Otherwise, given you're aware that particular measure is interested in measuring the degree of general distress you've felt over the past two weeks, it makes sense to be asking about how much you may have felt that way over the past few weeks. Like I noted before, some of the measures are aimed at a clinical sample, and I'm testing a broad community sample. I didn't develop that particular measure, its used fairly widely for the purpose of assessing the level of distress people have felt over the past two weeks and has show reliable and valid results previously in doing so. I hope you haven't taken offence in the way it's written, I'm just trying to explain that its doing exactly what it's supposed to be doing in terms of what that measure is interested in measuring. BUT...I can also see how they could have worded the "not at all sure" option to either state "not at all sure" OR "none of the time". That would definitely be clearer, but I didn't want to amend the distress measure for comparative reasons.

Christ, finished the survey, can you not see how incredibly negatively bias the questions are? I spent 90% of questions having to say no, no, no, I'm not depressed and putting off work and arguing with my family over how long I game for. I feel like even when I'm disagreeing with these negative-assuming questions my results will still suggest someone who has a problem with gaming because of the few times I agreed, since I felt there weren't any questions where I got to say- actually I am on top of things, my family enjoys gaming with me and gaming has helped me grow as a person. Edit: "I continue excessive use of Internet games despite knowing it causes me problems" "I have deceived family members, therapists, or others regarding the amount of time I spend Internet gaming." "I have jeopardized or lost significant relationships, jobs or educational opportunities because of participation in Internet games." Did you copy paste a questionnaire about cocaine intake and replace it with the word video games? I don't want to be overly rude but that's my impression.

[QUOTE=BarnacleDrive;47353974] I spent 90% of questions having to say no, no, no, I'm not depressed and putting off work and arguing with my family over how long I game for. .[/QUOTE] So then the way you answered the questions is in line with what you think about your gaming habits, that they're healthy and infact rewarding. Isn't that a good thing? It's actually really important to have respondents such as yourself, because you provide information that says quite a lot of gamers out there have reasonably healthy gaming habits. I'm a gamer, it doesn't interfere with my lifestyle etc, but I recognise that recording that as part of the sample is important, because then its demonstrated that for the most part, gaming is a hobby. While I can understand that the way the questions are worded can be confronting, and I'm sorry to hear you found the experience quite negative. While we are surveying gamers in general, and for the most part, they'll be fine, but we are looking into clinical disorders and its that side of the spectrum that we're interested in assessing. Hence why the questions can be perceived as negative. That doesn't mean that they're biased though.

It was a little long, but I got it done.

[QUOTE=CommitSudoku;47354225]It was a little long, but I got it done.[/QUOTE] Thanks for your support! Appreciate the effort :)

Couldn't be bothered finishing the test. It doesn't function right for me. If I need to change an answer I can't because checking one radio button doesn't uncheck the previously chosen one for that answer. Then on top of that it was restating every question for the answers making it annoying as hell to even find the answer I was aiming for. And that's on top of the fairly blatant bias others have mentioned.

[QUOTE=Alice3173;47358162]If I need to change an answer I can't because checking one radio button doesn't uncheck the previously chosen one for that answer. [/QUOTE] That sounds unusual, it could be a coding issue if you're using firefox? I tried to replicate the issue in chrome and it swapped the buttons, so that's all I can think of as to why it might have done that.

[QUOTE=Piercey;47346157]Hi All, I'm currently completing research into the newly proposed Internet Gaming Disorder as part of my PhD. We're essentially looking into whether it exists as a disorder, what it might be associated with if it does exist and if there's a difference between problematic and non-problematic gaming behavior. We're interested to hear from anyone who plays games, the survey talks about "Internet games" in the wording of the questions, but by that we mean [U]any video games[/U] from candy crush to WoW. If you're interested, I would really appreciate your time in completing the survey. It will take [B]around 20 minutes to complete[/B] and there is a follow up survey I'll send out in two weeks that takes [B]5 minutes[/B]. As an incentive for people to complete the survey, anyone who leaves their e-mail address at the end of the second survey is able to go in the running for a $100 Amazon voucher. The [B][U]survey link is here:[/U][/B] [url]https://curtin.asia.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_3ZPe9DSjj2jOcXH[/url] Really appreciate any support or comments you might have about the survey too, even if you hated it, that's completely fine too. Thanks![/QUOTE] This survey is awful. Seriously awful. I'm saying that in the academic sense. I would expect this kind of work from an undergrad, but not someone with a masters who is working on their doctorate. ALL of the following is research methods 101. Literally. My wife [B]teaches [/B]research methods at the university level and has a doctorate. 1.) The survey is too long. You are going to get bad data. Testing fatigue is real. 2.) The IRB shouldn't have approved it. You don't allow people to skip questions and you clearly start to measure things not related to videogame addiction. 3.) Because you measure things other than video game addiction, you needed to update your briefing. 4.) "Gender" isn't the question you want. You want to ask "sex". I know this because you have a binary response, whereas gender is not binary. (Yes, we can argue that sex isn't either, but for testing purposes, it is generally considered to be binary. ) 5.) You change the test design multiple times throughout the test. This is generally bad and increases the potency of testing fatigue. 6.) Likert Scales. Ew. Acceptable, but still, ew. 7.) When you reference "clinical" anything, you suggest that you have bad research methods. You only engage in clinical research when you have a real chance of hurting individuals. It generally means your control group isn't quite where it needs to be because you need to ensure the safety of the participants. In sociology or psychology, you try to avoid these types of research designs. The design is so bad that if I took the survey just to figure out how you were trying to scam people. I'm leaving this unlocked simply out of curiosity.

[QUOTE=GunFox;47359386] I'm leaving this unlocked simply out of curiosity.[/QUOTE] Thank you for your feedback on the survey. It is of course your decision whether or not the posting advertising the survey appears on this site, so I appreciate being given the opportunity.

I completely agree with GunFox and I'd like to add that I think it's strange that you are allowed to use an online survey for a PhD. Maybe things are just different in australia but in germany (and I think in the USA too) you are not allowed to use online surveys for your Bachelor/Master thesis or a PhD because it is unlikely to get meaningful data that way.

[QUOTE=The Saiko;47362727]I completely agree with GunFox and I'd like to add that I think it's strange that you are allowed to use an online survey for a PhD. Maybe things are just different in australia but in germany (and I think in the USA too) you are not allowed to use online surveys for your Bachelor/Master thesis or a PhD because it is unlikely to get meaningful data that way.[/QUOTE] To each their own. The survey is a fairly small component of the PhD research, not that I have to justify it. It really depends on the survey, in this case, very little has been done around the newly proposed Internet Gaming Disorder, so some data is better than none at all, and the issues raised can still be addressed or discussed as we proceed. I'm still on the fence about whether it exists or not, and am not using the survey as a sole source of data to assess any hypotheses I might have on the disorder. Quantitative approaches are useful in that you're able to gather a large amount of data in a relatively short space of time. There are issues, but there are issues to manage for any type of research. It still has its place, I think dismissing online survey research outright is giving up on a number of opportunities and there still seems to be plenty published material using online survey in a number of respectable journals? Although, to your point, and just to reiterate, that's why the survey is not sole focus of the PhD, but I know I don't have to justify that and I'm completely fine with people being critical of the research, for the most part, tone aside, it's usually helpful. So I appreciate the interest either way.

No data is actually much better than bad data.

[QUOTE=BarnacleDrive;47353974]Christ, finished the survey, can you not see how incredibly negatively bias the questions are? I spent 90% of questions having to say no, no, no, I'm not depressed and putting off work and arguing with my family over how long I game for. I feel like even when I'm disagreeing with these negative-assuming questions my results will still suggest someone who has a problem with gaming because of the few times I agreed, since I felt there weren't any questions where I got to say- actually I am on top of things, my family enjoys gaming with me and gaming has helped me grow as a person. Edit: "I continue excessive use of Internet games despite knowing it causes me problems" "I have deceived family members, therapists, or others regarding the amount of time I spend Internet gaming." "I have jeopardized or lost significant relationships, jobs or educational opportunities because of participation in Internet games." Did you copy paste a questionnaire about cocaine intake and replace it with the word video games? I don't want to be overly rude but that's my impression.[/QUOTE] I thought this was satirical until I also took the survey... "I would be a failure without my [cocaine]." "I would feel bad if I was not able to [do cocaine]." "[Cocaine] enable(s) me to escape from my problems and responsibilities." "I would not cope with stress in my life without [cocaine]." Christ and it feels like I'm being interrogated like the survey gets increasingly more aggressive about gaming habits in a negative sense. It's like the only winning move is not to play for some of these questions.

[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/qs8txPV.png[/IMG]

[QUOTE=zerf;47377230][IMG]http://i.imgur.com/qs8txPV.png[/IMG][/QUOTE] Looks like OP can relate to his own question [QUOTE]How often do you make careless mistakes when you have to work on a boring or difficult project?[/QUOTE]

[QUOTE=ScottyWired;47377407]Looks like OP can relate to his own question[/QUOTE] Its actually not a mistake, its deliberate. We're testing a number of measures, some known to not be very good (hence wanting to develop a new measure that isn't rubbish). The one you pointed out was originally translated from Spanish and I didn't change the wording so it could be compared to previous samples.

Gaming addiction has been a serious problem for me. My parents were unable to prevent me from over-indulging to the point of it negatively affecting health, school and social elements of my life. Nowadays I'm mostly alright but I still suffer from sleeping disorders and bad habits due to a history staying up late playing games. I have trouble meeting deadlines and play games instead of homework, chores, or spending time with my family. People complaining in this thread probably haven't experienced themselves or family/friends being affected in this way. It's not a drug, but it can definitely be an addiction. I certainly used it as an 'escape' during shit times in high school.

I think you could have at least cut down on the frequency of repeated questions.

[QUOTE=Shifty Pete;47400094]Gaming addiction has been a serious problem for me. My parents were unable to prevent me from over-indulging to the point of it negatively affecting health, school and social elements of my life. Nowadays I'm mostly alright but I still suffer from sleeping disorders and bad habits due to a history staying up late playing games. I have trouble meeting deadlines and play games instead of homework, chores, or spending time with my family. People complaining in this thread probably haven't experienced themselves or family/friends being affected in this way. It's not a drug, but it can definitely be an addiction. I certainly used it as an 'escape' during shit times in high school.[/QUOTE] I think it's fair to say that there will be varying degrees and reasons why people play games. And when initially proposing this research, escapism was high on the probable reasons, along with it just being a really fun hobby, that can sometimes result in a behavioural addiction. Which then evolved into the research as you've participated in part. Appreciate your comments Shifty Pete! [editline]31st March 2015[/editline] [QUOTE=Dr McNinja;47400678]I think you could have at least cut down on the frequency of repeated questions.[/QUOTE] I know...but as I said, I'm testing a few difference measures and am also interested in testing reliability of the measures and questions, which unfortunately means repetition. I can understand how it's a bit cumbersome though.