In an attempt to illicit as many responses as possible, the survey was posted on the Plans home page for six days. Any Plans user was allowed to take it. While some may argue that this survey is self-selecting, any survey of this type is self-selecting even if a sample pool is created because people contacted still must choose whether to take the survey or not. Logistically, selecting a random pool and distributing the survey would have been incredibly challenging and possibly even unfeasible in the allowed time frame. In the six-day period, 506 users — or 20% of the users active in the past six months — took the survey. While this may not be an accurate portrayal of all users, it is mostly likely a very accurate view of the most active population of Plans users. This population, in turn, is the one that plays the largest role in defining Plans and creating its dynamics.
Admittedly, I did not have a good enough sense of Plans membership before writing the survey for a number of reasons. In the original survey, I neglected to include alumni as a category — along side student, faculty, staff, and other — however, after noticing this, I added the choice after 66 surveys had been submitted. It can safely be assumed that most who responded as other during that time period were in fact alumni.
Second, this survey was written with an overt but unintentional current-student bias. Some reasons for this were intentional and others were not. Unintentional reasons included poor definitions surrounded some key terms within the survey such as "join." The survey was intended to study this specific version of Plans, so for those who joined before v2.2, some questions did not apply. However, the original year of entry into the community ended up not being used in the statistical analysis. Finally, this survey, and the initial project proposal, was most interested in focusing on the interactions between real life and virtual life. This is most applicable to students and explains the focus given to them in some sections of the report.
This survey was not meant to be a comprehensive survey of Plans. While some exact data may have been available from other sources, it is important that perception match reality for a system to smoothly function. Even if the framework allows for a community to form, Plans must be approached as such (and it is) for it to become a community. As mentioned much earlier in this paper, a full scale study of Plans would take more time, energy, and sociological knowledge than I have.
In short, I am a first year, in Introduction to Sociology, and a student who was shut out of Applied Statistics this semester. I have not been trained in empirical methods. However, a study of Plans without some of the basic information I collected would be lacking and, therefore, I chose to do what I could with the data I collected. The data was collected using a survey-building tool (see About) and the data was dumped into a simple Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and analyzed there. I attempted to avoid statistical blunders by using only the simplest of calculations — counts and percentages — but some of my methods may have been flawed. Even in this light, I struggle to believe that data was completely misinterpreted.
Thus far I have relied almost solely on one source, The Monochromatic Society, by Amitai Etzioni. Over the summer I hope to read more on requirements and models of communities and add their applications to this report. We shall see how that goes.