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<blockquote data-quote="Aldarc" data-source="post: 7751238" data-attributes="member: 5142">Okay. A big part of the initial claim in the article comes from this comment: So now we need to know something about the methodology here. And so I did a search in the Google book document for &quot;interview.&quot; I cannot see the full excerpt, but there is a small snippet that reads &quot;In addition to participant observation, I conducted lengthy interviews (one to three hours) with two dozen gamers. Although the interview subjects are neither a random sampling nor systematic sampling of gamers...&quot; and then it cuts off. So it's possible that the &quot;large majority of interviewees&quot; then reflects the &quot;large majority&quot; of the two dozen sampled. The whole &quot;everybody cheats&quot; comes directly from the words of one of the interviewees. And the nature of the cheating takes on numerous forms (e.g., character creation, reported rolls in play, metagaming, etc.). But the issue of cheating only receives a small sliver of attention in this book (pp. 99-102). Mind you, even if one succesfully criticizes his methodology, this does not mean that the inverse results are therefore true: i.e., the majority of gamers don't cheat. (I do worry that some people will leap to that conclusion.) It means that the results are inaccurate for representing the gaming hobby, however we define those constituents.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Aldarc, post: 7751238, member: 5142"] Okay. A big part of the initial claim in the article comes from this comment: So now we need to know something about the methodology here. And so I did a search in the Google book document for "interview." I cannot see the full excerpt, but there is a small snippet that reads "[I]In addition to participant observation, I conducted lengthy interviews (one to three hours) with two dozen gamers. Although the interview subjects are neither a random sampling nor systematic sampling of gamers...[/I]" and then it cuts off. So it's possible that the "large majority of interviewees" then reflects the "large majority" of the two dozen sampled. The whole "everybody cheats" comes directly from the words of one of the interviewees. And the nature of the cheating takes on numerous forms (e.g., character creation, reported rolls in play, metagaming, etc.). But the issue of cheating only receives a small sliver of attention in this book (pp. 99-102). Mind you, even if one succesfully criticizes his methodology, this does not mean that the inverse results are therefore true: i.e., [I]the majority of gamers don't cheat[/I]. (I do worry that some people will leap to that conclusion.) It means that the results are inaccurate for representing the gaming hobby, however we define those constituents. [/QUOTE]

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