Conducting Research in Virtual Communities

Mario Menti of msurveys.com recently posted a note on his blog describing how easy it was to create a survey, solicit responses, and then compensate the respondents in SecondLife. A very interesting, unique and possibily even useful experiment to be sure.

Second Life is a virtual community much like a massively-multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) such as World of Warcraft, Everquest or Star Wars Galaxies except that instead of fighting monsters and completing quests your objective is…well…there isn’t really one. You buy property, meet people, simply fly around or create things. In fact, using the basic building blocks provided by the software you can create just about anything if you have enough patience and skill.

While most people build digital representations of physical things (like buildings, sculptures or stargates). Mario used his time and skill to create an online survey. In fact, he even set it up so that individuals who finish the survey are rewarded with in-game money.

Think about this in context with the recent findings of the Pew Internet & American Life project, where 52% of a broad-based, national sample agreed with the following:

“By the year 2020, virtual reality on the internet will come to allow more productivity from most people in technologically-savvy communities than working in the “real world.” But the attractive nature of virtual-reality worlds will also lead to serious addiction problems for many, as we lose people to alternative realities.”

The entire report (entitled “The Future of the Internet II“) is fascinating and contains a number of interesting predictions for the future (along with what people thinking of them). Definitely worth a read.

I love Mario’s experiment. And while it is probably true that it is just a little too early to jump on this technological bandwagon (unless you’re trying to do a survey about virtual communities and the people who use them, it is probably going to be difficult to come up with a sample that is relevant to your research questions) I think the time won’t be so far off when data collected in environments such as Second Life is the norm.

Read about Mario’s Second Life survey experience on his blog.
Watch a video of someone completing the Second Life survey.