PoE players, the mentally healthier people?

Tala moana, warrior,

TL;DR version of the text below:

I (PoE player since Incursion and current PhD student at VuW, NZ) want to investigate empirically (meaning using data rather than assumptions) possible connections between playing (or rather using) video games, a person's wellbeing, and their personality.
For this I need participants (the more participate, the more reliable and representative my results will be) who would fill in two questionnaires (one on game usage, one on wellbeing, personality, and demographics) taking about 10 minute each. Besides general demographic information no personal information is required, unless you win one of the vouchers (for NZ$50 each) offered, then I will need an e-mail address.
Anyone who plays video games more or less regularly is warmly invited to participate!
You can find the links to both questionnaires on the study's website at https://game-usage.weebly.com/surveys.html.

(This research has been approved by the Victoria University of Wellington (VUW) Human Ethics Committee [application no. 0000025324]. It is not affiliated with GGG or any other company or institution besides VUW).

Thank you!
Florian


Now the longer version:
Some of you may remember me, as I have posted on a previous phase of my study on game usage before and got excellent feedback from you, thanks again for that! This post relates to the final stage of that study, and with your help I hope to be able to soon comment meaningfully on the results.

As long time video game player I have spent hours over hours playing various games, but also discussing with others why we play, and how playing influences our lives. I have now turned my hobby for discussions into an academic (PhD) study. The aim of the project is to investigate possible correlations between video game usage, wellbeing, and personality. What makes this study different than most others in this area is that it takes into consideration that different people can play even the same games differently.

Everyone who plays video games more or less regularly is warmly invited to participate.
Participating would mean filling out two questionnaires, taking about 10 minutes each. One questionnaire is on personality, wellbeing and demographics, while the other one is on how video games are used by you.

Participants in both questionnaires can enter a draw for one of 20 vouchers worth NZ$50 (or nearest local equivalent, about US$35) each as thank you.

You can find details on the study and the links to the questionnaires on the study's website at https://game-usage.weebly.com in the surveys section (the direct links are http://vuw.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_cMuTw4bSUeWgZmt for the game usage questionnaire and http://vuw.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0J1PKoblHiJnRk1 for the personality, wellbeing and demographics one).

Feel free to ask any questions or discuss anything related to this project in this post.

And please share the link to the website with anyone who might be interested in participating (friends, guild/clan mates, etc.). The more people participate, the more reliable, informative, and hopefully impactful will the results be.

Thank you, kind regards, and have a good and not too stressful new year,
Florian Flueggen, PhD student at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

I remember you. I love studies as long as they don't involve ingestion or injection.

Done.

Thanks to all of those who have participated so far.

Also thanks for the feedback, Zphyr. No, you did not skip a page or too, I actually do not ask about education level :-)
On the one hand many studies that do ask about it end up not using it anyway. On the other hand, that variable is usually used to make generally invalid assumptions about participants' character traits (when in most societies education level is still sadly more a function of opportunity and socio-economic background than of a personality trait). Instead my study uses personality traits, which give me more informative and reliable information.

Thanks a lot for pointing out that issue with the PvP variable, I need to reconsider the description of that factor.
The issue with it is that my previous analysis has indicated certain relationships between the questions, but it is up to me to describe and name them properly.
In the case of this one I was too general, because you are right, only one of the five questions that feed into it are directly PvP related, the other ones could very well stem from other activities (speaking with other players is not one of them).

"

ArgentumWulf wrote:

Tala moana, warrior,

Everyone who plays video games more or less regularly is warmly invited to participate.
Participating would mean filling out two questionnaires, taking about 10 minutes each. One questionnaire is on personality, wellbeing and demographics, while the other one is on how video games are used by you.

Participants in both questionnaires can enter a draw for one of 20 vouchers worth NZ$50 (or nearest local equivalent, about US$35) each as thank you.

You can find details on the study and the links to the questionnaires on the study's website at https://game-usage.weebly.com in the surveys section (the direct links are http://vuw.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_cMuTw4bSUeWgZmt for the game usage questionnaire and http://vuw.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0J1PKoblHiJnRk1 for the personality, wellbeing and demographics one).

Feel free to ask any questions or discuss anything related to this project in this post.

And please share the link to the website with anyone who might be interested in participating (friends, guild/clan mates, etc.). The more people participate, the more reliable, informative, and hopefully impactful will the results be.

Reposting the call to participants.

I found it interesting that you didn't select out people with a diagnosed mental health issue. Studies usually screen that out; especially those that are dealing with personality and well-being.

Was that choice deliberate, and if so, why?

I'm a fan of mixed-method research. Do you plan to include any qual data?

Was the title supposed to be a clickbait? I saw it a few days ago, but didn't mean to open it, because I thought it's a troll thread. Only wanted to read what Charan (鬼殺し) wrote.

I also remember you, filled your first questionnaire. Will do the others later.

Please post updates here. :)

Well, in the end not that quietly, 鬼殺し ;-)

@erdelyii That's a good point. The choice was semi-deliberate. It isn't that easy to reliably screen "health issues" out (many "mental health issues" aren't defined too well), and attempting that would increase the length of the questionnaires or make some participants feel weird about the questionnaires, which would contribute to one of my main issues: finding enough participants.
The other issue is a theoretical one: a strong theory explains "anomalies" in the data, rather than excluding it. Thus far there is no empirical basis that would warrant excluding certain people from this research, as the interactions are still unknown. Some conditions might manifest very differently in this context.
Finally, though - while not being clinical screening tools - it has been shown that the questionnaires used can be reliable indicators of health issues, meaning I can take those things into consideration when analysing the results.

Yeah, that's the problem with click-baits, Iangyratu. I usually have an aversion to posts with those kind of, titles, too. But last time (the previous stage), when I tried a "more me" conservative title, it didn't go too well, so now I tried something different.
But in the end it is not just a click-bait, as it is a question I really am wondering about and hope to be able to answer at the end of my study.

Sure, I'd be happy to post updates here :-)

"

ArgentumWulf wrote:

@erdelyii That's a good point. The choice was semi-deliberate. It isn't that easy to reliably screen "health issues" out (many "mental health issues" aren't defined too well), and attempting that would increase the length of the questionnaires or make some participants feel weird about the questionnaires, which would contribute to one of my main issues: finding enough participants.
The other issue is a theoretical one: a strong theory explains "anomalies" in the data, rather than excluding it. Thus far there is no empirical basis that would warrant excluding certain people from this research, as the interactions are still unknown. Some conditions might manifest very differently in this context.
Finally, though - while not being clinical screening tools - it has been shown that the questionnaires used can be reliable indicators of health issues, meaning I can take those things into consideration when analysing the results.

Thanks for your answer, ArgentumWulf. I think your choice is a good one.

"PoE players, the mentally healthier people?"

Title already says, incompetent person looks for "truth" where is none and is solving own issues by "using" others.

What does it mean mental health and healthier than who?

Only who can say who is healthier is a doctor and not psychologists. Educated by school psychologists, priests and whatever religion representatives are manipulators. Its good to listen to everybody and make own decision, but stay under their wings means to be insane and to buy and lives by lies.