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[Aberzanzorax]

Originally Posted by cmbarona

I find this idea absolutely fascinating. I was a psychology major in college, so I'm quite interested in hearing about your findings. I've heard a ton of anecdotal stuff, both pro-RPG and anti-RPG, and I've long wanted an empirical study of the effects of TTRPGs. I wish I could make some suggestions, but I've only played a few systems thus far. Of them, I'd suggest D&D 4e because it's relatively easy to learn, but of course it tends to be more combat-heavy. It also has a number of published adventures that might make things easier for the people actually running the experiments; which, if you can get some assistants, I would highly recommend.

How are you thinking of coding the data?

Well, I'm not sure if I'll have "data" per se...at least not for the dissertation itself. I may, though.

The idea is to develop a way of using a system, grounded solidly in the literature...so I'll be reading up on everything related to mental health and roleplaying first. After that, and once I find a rules system, I'll develop instructions for how to implement it, along with guidelines to "troubleshoot". I'm assuming that if the game has a GM/DM that that person would be the acting therapist (which might mean a parent if a parent is playing this game with his or her children).

I'm not looking to do my own research of the gaming population per se. While I WILL very much need to read up on those materials (and you'll likely see some threads from me over the next few months on interesting articles I find), I won't be measuring gamers vs non gamers or somesuch.

If I go beyond dissertation level with this (or maybe I would do this for the dissertation as well, I'm not sure yet) the way to measure it would be to have three groups (at least).

I'd want a population of people from which to draw (and defining that would be part of the challenge) and would use standard measures to assess severity of symptoms (there are tons of measures out there).

Then there would be a "treatment group" of my protocol, a "waiting list group", and a "alternate treatment group". After my protocol's treatment was done, I'd compare the stats.

But, that's a long way away, and I'm not sure it's necessary for the dissertation itself. The dissertation would be about creating the product. Further studies would be about determining whether it was any good or not.