Raven Posted January 9, 2012 Share Posted January 9, 2012 SF, I need your help in regards to my final year dissertation. My dissertation is looking into violence in video games. I need about 5 to 10 minutes of your time so you can go through the online questionnaire I constructed using Google Docs. Link to the questionnaire. Thanks in advance to anyone who replies to this. I'll leave this topic open for you to ask me any questions regarding it personally. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
viyut Posted January 9, 2012 Share Posted January 9, 2012 I think the question "Do you think violent video games are in any way responsible for acts of real life violence?" needs the option "it depends on the person".Maybe it's just me but i've seen people who played violent videogames all the time and were really calm and laid back people. If someone turns agressive because of a videogame, it likely means that person had some tendency of being agressive before. But that is just my theory, feel free to disregard it completely. Also, good luck with your dissertation! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raven Posted January 9, 2012 Author Share Posted January 9, 2012 I think the question "Do you think violent video games are in any way responsible for acts of real life violence?" needs the option "it depends on the person".Maybe it's just me but i've seen people who played violent videogames all the time and were really calm and laid back people. If someone turns agressive because of a videogame, it likely means that person had some tendency of being agressive before. But that is just my theory, feel free to disregard it completely. Also, good luck with your dissertation! That much is true. I'm surprised I didn't notice that myself. I'll take the suggestion back to my tutor and see what he says about it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Balcerzak Posted January 9, 2012 Share Posted January 9, 2012 Regarding Do you think that violence in video games can make people more passive or aggressive? * I chose: "None at all" because there didn't seem to be an option that suggested that some people may become more passive, while others may become more aggressive, which I feel more accurately reflects things. Regarding Have you ever found yourself acting aggressively or violently as a result of playing violent video games? * I chose: "Not at all" because I have had those same reactions as a result of playing non-violent video games, so I cannot assign the violence as the cause. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raven Posted January 9, 2012 Author Share Posted January 9, 2012 Regarding Do you think that violence in video games can make people more passive or aggressive? * I chose: "None at all" because there didn't seem to be an option that suggested that some people may become more passive, while others may become more aggressive, which I feel more accurately reflects things. Regarding Have you ever found yourself acting aggressively or violently as a result of playing violent video games? * I chose: "Not at all" because I have had those same reactions as a result of playing non-violent video games, so I cannot assign the violence as the cause. I'll talk about the first question tomorrow with my tutor. As for the second one, I was considering changing the question to include just video games in general and not specifying it to just violent games, but I decided to keep it to violent ones since that's what the research is about. Your answer is fine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Excellen Browning Posted January 9, 2012 Share Posted January 9, 2012 Tell me Raven, what is the goal of this questionary? I'm getting the feeling it is "to get everyday-man's opinion of violence in video games" and if that's the case I'm saddened to have to inform you it actually forgoes completely this goal. IT just gives you some useless statistics. I seriously recommend redoing it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raven Posted January 9, 2012 Author Share Posted January 9, 2012 Tell me Raven, what is the goal of this questionary? I'm getting the feeling it is "to get everyday-man's opinion of violence in video games" and if that's the case I'm saddened to have to inform you it actually forgoes completely this goal. IT just gives you some useless statistics. I seriously recommend redoing it. That is what it might seem, however the results of these are going to run alongside physical observations and interviews I will be conducting in real life with several people. I needed more than one source of data so I chose the internet. The experiences of the people who I will be monitoring in real life, alongside their own answers they will be giving in the interview stages, will be the largest point of observation within my results. While the personal one-to-one real life interviews/observations will provide qualitative results, the internet - this questionnaire - will hopefully provide quantitative results. Hope that makes things a little clearer. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Excellen Browning Posted January 9, 2012 Share Posted January 9, 2012 If you're going to explain your research to me, at least do it in proper form. goal first, then a description of method. Tell me your goddamn goal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raven Posted January 9, 2012 Author Share Posted January 9, 2012 If you're going to explain your research to me, at least do it in proper form. goal first, then a description of method. Tell me your goddamn goal. The goal is basically the title of the research: "Violent video games and their effects on people aged 18 and over". It is to discover whether or not, and/or to what extent, violence in video games contributes to aggression and violence in people in real life. It's a rather extensive and debated topic and I'm running on a very narrow timeframe, so I really don't have a lot of time or resources to dive very deep. I would go into mental aspects, but really I'll only be skimming the surface of that if the opportunity arises within the one-to-one interviews. I've already conducted the literature review and methodology, hence me going into the research aspect now. I've got until March to conduct my research, write up my results as well as the conclusion and recommendations. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Inactive Account Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 I'm a little iffy on this because of how much it depends on one's definition of a violent game, and because no explanations are allowed for later questions. It would be different if there were differentiation between violent and overly violent, because a very, very large number of games have the protagonist committing or ordering acts of violence, but we rarely see Pokemon or Zelda being as decried or scrutinized as the entirety of the FPS genre, for instance. How the violence is portrayed, what type of violence it is, and motivations for violence also factor in in ways that the questionnaire doesn't really cover. You don't really see people calling out Shadow of the Colossus for encouraging kids to go out and kill big majestic endangered species, even though that's basically what you do in the game, because the game makes you feel like shit for doing it. You also don't see Zelda getting a lot of hate for being violent, because it's very clearly fantasy. And games where you only kill the "bad guys" (especially when the "bad guys" are unambiguously bad, and can't really be seen as victims) are usually seen as less of a problem than games where you can kill anyone. Also what Viyut said about it depending on the person. I don't think most violent games, even overly violent ones, actually encourage violence, but they can sometimes make it seem like it's an acceptable response to things when it isn't (they kind of sound like the same thing, but there's a difference between "violence is great, kids!" and "maybe violence wouldn't be so bad in this situation".) Not everyone is going to respond to that in the same way. I would guess that for the most part people who are sort of subconsciously looking for affirmation that violence is okay are the main group who would actually heed any such message found in games, as they would heed such a message found elsewhere (i.e. such a reaction would not be limited to games). For me personally, I don't think there's a game in existence that could convince me that it was a good idea to hurt someone in a situation I wouldn't already be willing to do so in (ex. I'd be willing to resort to nonlethal violence in self-defense regardless of games, and no game will convince me to do worse than that in self-defense). For someone already considering hurting someone, and just needing a little validation in order to actually go ahead with it, the situation might well be different. tl;dr It's a start but I think this survey really oversimplifies. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Celice Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 I felt like there was a lot of leading/intended answers the creator of the survey didn't check for. I tried to answer it as honestly as possible, but most of the time the questions were slanting my responses away from how I actually feel. I tried to explain where applicable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eclipse Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 1. I answered it. 2. My results will probably skew your survey in the wrong direction. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Excellen Browning Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 2. My results will probably skew your survey in the wrong direction. If you've answered it honestly, there's no way you could skew the results. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rehab Posted January 10, 2012 Share Posted January 10, 2012 I tried to answer the questionnaire honestly, but also felt it was a bit leading. I put in a couple of games that might not be widely considered very violent, such as Tactics Ogre and Infinite Space, because for the purpose of your survey I was defining how violent a game is by whether violence and references/themes about violence and/or death are common, as well as whether violence is necessary or encouraged to complete the game. I only wish I could site it, but I remember hearing about a study that found that playing competitive games was more likely to correlate with aggressive behaviors, than was playing violent but noncompetitive games. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Raven Posted January 10, 2012 Author Share Posted January 10, 2012 Thanks for the feedback. The reported leading within questions was not intentional. I'll be having my meeting with my tutor in the morning, so I'll bring up the raised issues mentioned here. As for the definition of a violent video game, the lack of a definition within the questionnaire is intentional. You can go by whatever you perceive as a violent video game. If I tried to define it for you, that would probably just complicate things and would skew the results, I believe. I prefer it this way because it creates discussion for my results and conclusion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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