Wanted: Your opinions on the LC Forum for PhD Thesis

[Rodin]

Blimey Liz, nearly 24000 posts, and all of them nuggets of wisdom.
Do you have a goldfish?

[LC&LC]

I suddenly felt the urge for some positive thinking, and for something constructive
and I have now completed the Survey, please forgive me for being so late to do so
good luck with your thesis
C

[mamtear]

Hi everyone,
Thanks for the support! No worries about the data, it doesn't appear to have 11 duplicates.
I very much appreciate your concern over the integrity of my data...as another poster has noted, this study isn't about splitting the atom, but I hope that the results will eventually help moderators and community leaders create more supportive, positive environments for their members. In my small way, I'm just trying to find a way to improve community life in general
On another note, I'm going to be running the responses I have so far from this forum through my model this weekend. Fingers crossed, and I'll post here again in a few days with the results. In the meantime, of course, I can still use some more new responses!
Have a wonderful weekend, everybody,
Maggie

[lizzytysh]

Thanks for your feedback, Maggie.
Your results can only help to improve various kinds of communities.
In today's world, that can only be a positive.

The very best of luck to you with your thesis... such an honour for Leonard's work and for Jarkko's commitment to maintaining a high quality website, to be included in such a thesis. Many newcomers have made it a point to say that this is the highest quality forum they've found.


~ Lizzy

[hydriot]

Sorry to spoil the party-feeling on this thread, but I would like to express a contrary view. Having done this poll (and, yes, only once), I have very real doubts that any conclusions of value can come from it. From where I stand, its methodology is deeply flawed.

To have any validity at all, a study like this must have a control group, which this one does not. Secondly, the input is a self-selecting sample. Third, I found many of the questions frustratingly 'wrong' ... meaning that the question itself seemed to be exploring a non-point, and there was no way to express rejection of the question itself (questions analagous to: "Do you consider a banana more like an apple or more like an orange?")

I did mention my concerns privately at the end of my poll responses, but now that the poll is drawing to a close I feel I want to add here some balance to recent comments. A doctorate is a serious business, and at this level any such study must have an exemplary methodology.

[mamtear]

Hello Hydriot,
Thank you for taking the time to complete the study and offer some input. You are absolutely right in that if this were an experiment, the gold standard would be a random sample with a control group. As you know, these are particularly useful in tests to determine the impact of an intervention that is applied to one group but not the other (e.g. how did a group treated with this drug fare out compared to the group with no drug?)

My study approach (a type of quasi-experiment) is pretty typical in the social sciences where the goal is to find out the relationships between different constructs, such as whether you need to have job commitment before you can have job satisfaction (and in scenarios where it might otherwise be impossible to collect this kind of data). Instead of having a control group, I am looking at mediation effects by dividing the group according to high and low scores on certain questions, and then seeing how the relationships change accordingly. In my case, the survey questions and method have been approved by three well-published PhDs on my Committee and my statistics advisor, so I'm confident that it's appropriate for this particular project.

I'd be happy to share more info on this approach with anyone who is interested. Thanks again...I really appreciate the opportunity to discuss my research with others.
Maggie

[mamtear]

Hello everybody,
Great news! I was able to cross validate my model with the data you so generously gave me. This means not only do I have an original model built on one set of data, but also I was able to generalize it to another set of data (LCF) and it still fits really well. You don't hear that every day

I'm using a Structural Equation Model to show the relationship between four variables: Identification with the group (how much you feel your own values overlap with those of others in the group, and with the community as a whole); the Norms of the group (Is it a tit-for-tat culture, or a "what goes around comes around" culture?); satisfaction with peer relationships; and willingness to sacrifice. What the model shows is that the level of satisfaction that community members have with others has a very large effect on their willingness to sacrifice their time and energy for the community at large (50% of the variance in Willingness to Sacrifice is explained by Satisfaction and to a lesser extent, Identification). In turn, willingness to sacrifice leads to a number of other desirable behaviours such as positive word-of-mouth, member retention and loyalty (not shown in this model). What is interesting (at least to me!) is that there are many theories suggesting that unspoken rules (or Norms) of a community are a large influence on willingness to sacrifice, but these empirical results suggest there is actually no direct effect (the direct pathway was insignificant). Instead, the effect of Norms is fully mediated by the satisfaction that people feel with others in the community. I haven't really thought about all of the implications of this yet. When my dissertation is ready I'll post a link here so that everyone can see it. In the meantime, I wanted to thank everyone once more for taking the time to help me.
All the best,
Maggie

[lizzytysh]

Thank you for keeping us updated as you promised, too, mamtear.
Interesting constructs and you did well in coming here for relevant participation.
All the best to you in producing your final product, and looking forward to seeing it, as well.


~ Lizzy