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Participate in my PhD Research into Geocaching


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I'm a PhD student based in the Open University in the UK, researching the impact of location awareness on informal learning. I’m particularly interested in geocaching, and in the effect it has had on the way people experience their physical environment and interact with other members of the geocaching community.

 

Bryan from Geocaching.com has kindly given me permission to invite geocachers from the Groundspeak forums to fill in my web questionnaire. I’m looking to collect data from as many geocachers as possible, so please take 10 minutes to complete this survey:

 

http://elsa.open.ac.uk/geocaching.survey

 

I would like to follow up the web survey with some case-studies. If you would be happy to participate in more in-depth interviews either by phone, web-based video conferencing or email, please provide your contact details at the end of the survey. I shall write up the results of this study in my thesis and will post a summary of my findings in this forum, but all data I collect will be anonymised and will not be tracked back to individuals.

 

For more details about my PhD research, or to contact me about this study, please visit my university webpage or post your questions in this thread.

 

I hope the survey will be fun to do. :D Thanks in advance for participating.

 

Gill

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I started filling in your form, but stopped when I read the question 'how do you find the time to go geocaching?'. Sorry dude, this is not a research question. You don't find time, you don't have time. I hope the quality of the research is not a criterium for your PhD. What are you going to write in your findings? 'a lot of people answered that they did not had a life next to geocaching, i found this to be a funny answer?'

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I started filling in your form, but stopped when I read the question 'how do you find the time to go geocaching?'. Sorry dude, this is not a research question. You don't find time, you don't have time. I hope the quality of the research is not a criterium for your PhD. What are you going to write in your findings? 'a lot of people answered that they did not had a life next to geocaching, i found this to be a funny answer?'

Hi,

 

I'm sorry that my question caused you to give up on the survey. It was not intended to offend. I have done several pilot studies and one of the factors that emerged as critical to the level of engagement with the mobile activities I was looking into was motivation. In my last pilot study I provided people with technology (HP IPAQ 6915s with GPS, camera, etc) and asked them to participate in a GPS-guided nature trail. Among my findings was an issue with motivation. Because I am interested in what people do in the informal sphere, I tried to allow a fair amount of latitude in how the participants actually did the pilot. I asked people to do the trail using the IPAQ, but when they did it was up to them, within a 3-4 month period. I asked them to take pictures and record their experiences in a shared blog but I did not specify when or how often.

 

Some participants did participate fully, but a high percentage did not despite seeming very keen at the start of the pilot. Upon further enquiry, "lack of time" was often cited as a reason for non-participation in the blog (all participants did the Nature Trail at least once). However I think that "lack of time" is evidence of a motivational problem rather than an organisational one.

 

My question asking how people find the time to go geocaching is one of several questions designed to assess the level of motivation people feel. I am hoping to be able to consolidate all the answers to my motivational questions to built up some sort of picture.

 

However, thank-you for your feedback. I'll monitor the answers to that question carefully and remove it if it seems to be causing problems. I don't want to put others off as I have you.

 

All feedback is very welcome. Trying to get together the right questions to answer the questions I have in my research is challenging, and despite piloting the questionnaire, I'm sure to have included some bloopers. Please point them out to me :D

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Snoogans, the original post properly recites that Groundspeak's permission was obtained to use the Forums for this survey. So that is quite enough about that, thank you. This thread won't be locked.

 

 

Yeaaaa, ummm, that's not what I was talking about. I DID read the OP.

 

I also participated in the survey before anyone posted to this thread.

Edited by Snoogans
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It was not intended to offend. I have done several pilot studies and one of the factors that emerged as critical to the level of engagement with the mobile activities I was looking into was motivation.
I wasn't offended at all. It could be that i seemed to be, due to my poor english. If it was my research, i'd find a way to make relative and abstract matters measurable. I.e. spending time in relation to having free time. Motivation is harder to objectify, but it is an option to measure it by making people rate their motivation on a scale. I'm sure there are already existing measuring standards to rule out abstractions or interpretations. Look into fields of social studies or psychology, you're bound to find those there.

 

My spider sense says this thread will be locked. (...............) Will you share with those that participate? Even if you get shut down here?

Why would it be locked? He has permission for it... I also hope to see the results of the study.

 

Good luck on the research!

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This thread won't be locked.

 

 

Okayyy, so it won't be locked. I'm bettin' you'll have to throw down some warnings and suspensions.

 

 

Where are the results of the last Groundspeak sanctioned survey? Hmmmmm? :D:D:D:D

Edited by Snoogans
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I wasn't offended at all. It could be that i seemed to be, due to my poor english. If it was my research, i'd find a way to make relative and abstract matters measurable. I.e. spending time in relation to having free time. Motivation is harder to objectify, but it is an option to measure it by making people rate their motivation on a scale. I'm sure there are already existing measuring standards to rule out abstractions or interpretations. Look into fields of social studies or psychology, you're bound to find those there.

 

My spider sense says this thread will be locked. (...............) Will you share with those that participate? Even if you get shut down here?

Why would it be locked? He has permission for it... I also hope to see the results of the study.

 

Good luck on the research!

 

Thanks for that Goonies. I am hoping that the likert scale in question 3 will give me a reasonably quantifiable indication of motivation, and that I can use the qualitative text responses to provide specific examples. I like your suggestion about measuring geocaching time in relation to free time. I shall incorporate that into my case studies when I do them.

 

Analysis will take a while, however I shall either post a summary of the findings that I think are of most interest in this thread, or I'll collate them on my website and post a link to it here.

 

Thank you all for filling in the survey and posting your views in this thread. I really appreciate it.

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sigh..l This thread is getting more and more vicious and controversial; witness the past ten posts. I give it only 200,000 more posts before the moderators shut this thread down for the rampant of-topic stuff and the blatant hostility.

 

 

 

 

you suck.

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sigh..l This thread is getting more and more vicious and controversial; witness the past ten posts. I give it only 200,000 more posts before the moderators shut this thread down for the rampant of-topic stuff and the blatant hostility.

 

 

 

 

you suck.

I think everyone needs a hug.

 

hug3.gif

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Filled it out, good stuff.

 

One of the questions near the top (select one) allows you to check more than one, and you can't uncheck.

Thanks for pointing that out Maingray. I've identified the renegade question and fixed it.

 

I tested the survey myself and got others to test it before publishing it - but something just always slips through. :anitongue: I'm really pleased everyone is so proactive about filling in the survey and then feeding comments back through this thread.

 

I'm getting some really good data back from this and I shall certainly post initial findings back through this thread. Response-rate to online surveys is often quite poor. However, as I suspected, geocachers are an exception to this. As you've taken the time to give me your views, it is only fair that I take the time to get back to you.

 

I plan to leave the survey live for 3 or 4 weeks and then a full analysis will take some time after that, I dread to think quite how long. However I'll set myself a target of a month to collate the data and do at least some preliminary analyses that I can post here.

 

Having a target date to get responses back may help stop me from indulging in those all too attractive displacement activities :anitongue:

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sigh..l This thread is getting more and more vicious and controversial; witness the past ten posts. I give it only 200,000 more posts before the moderators shut this thread down for the rampant of-topic stuff and the blatant hostility.

 

 

 

 

you suck.

 

Flask, Vinny is notorious for his - how shall I say this? - dry wit and warped sense of humor. I'm sure he meant no harm in his post. He's just that way...

 

But we love him!

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sigh..l This thread is getting more and more vicious and controversial; witness the past ten posts. I give it only 200,000 more posts before the moderators shut this thread down for the rampant of-topic stuff and the blatant hostility.

 

 

 

 

you suck.

 

Flask, Vinny is notorious for his - how shall I say this? - dry wit and warped sense of humor. I'm sure he meant no harm in his post. He's just that way...

 

But we love him!

 

pssst... it was a joke...

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sigh..l This thread is getting more and more vicious and controversial; witness the past ten posts. I give it only 200,000 more posts before the moderators shut this thread down for the rampant of-topic stuff and the blatant hostility.

 

 

 

 

you suck.

 

Flask, Vinny is notorious for his - how shall I say this? - dry wit and warped sense of humor. I'm sure he meant no harm in his post. He's just that way...

 

But we love him!

 

pssst... it was a joke...

Maybe for flask,but Vinny on the other hand was probably too used to the wandering and bickering that occurs in well meaning threads.

 

I blame the shape shifting NWO lackeys. :anitongue:

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Survey completed, thanks for promoting, spreading the sport.

 

When will results be made public in the forum?

Tom Fuller

Crescent, OR

 

Well, I hate to commit myself, but if I leave the survey running for about 3 weeks, as I originally intended, then I should have all the data by the beginning of July. I could probably quickly extract some of the statistics and post them here fairly quickly. It's the analysis that's going to take time.

 

So, I guess I could post this preliminary data up here sometime in July.

 

Probably seems like a long time, but the longer I run the survey, the more data I get and the better the results. :anitongue:

 

Gill

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sigh..l This thread is getting more and more vicious and controversial; witness the past ten posts. I give it only 200,000 more posts before the moderators shut this thread down for the rampant of-topic stuff and the blatant hostility.

 

 

 

 

you suck.

I think everyone needs a hug.

 

hug3.gif

 

I know I could use one.. :anitongue:

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