Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Aberzanzorax" data-source="post: 5948507" data-attributes="member: 64209">Oh, I agree. What my list hits is more on the lines of a &quot;for publication in an academic journal&quot; or even &quot;dissertation for doctoral status&quot;.&nbsp;And I do agree, there's some work that can be done on a smaller level.&nbsp;However, I think it's really unfair to call this &quot;the closest to a scientific study&quot; of anything. It's simply, to be blunt, unscientific. It's interesting, to be sure. Let me put it this way: I don't discourage the project at all. It would be a fun blog to read (the OP of the thread was interesting to comment on). However, absolutely no extrapolation beyond the actual subjects of the event should be done. This will not tell us anything about a larger population in any reliable way. In fact, it will not even give us information that we could use to extrapolate about the subjects themselves (how they might behave in different rpg scenarios, with different characters, in non-rpg venues, etc).&nbsp;I only comment on this because gender is somewhat of a touchy issue (as is any classification of people)...and it's far too easy to design an &quot;experiment&quot; to test gender differences, only to confirm one's own personal stereotypes (without ever meaning to do that). &nbsp;If this were an experiment of &quot;are players of wizards able to step out of the box and play fighters? Do they still approach conflicts as wizards?&quot; I'd be much less cautious about people taking it as more &quot;scientific&quot; than it is.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Aberzanzorax, post: 5948507, member: 64209"] Oh, I agree. What my list hits is more on the lines of a "for publication in an academic journal" or even "dissertation for doctoral status". And I do agree, there's some work that can be done on a smaller level. However, I think it's really unfair to call this "the closest to a scientific study" of anything. It's simply, to be blunt, unscientific. It's interesting, to be sure. Let me put it this way: I don't discourage the project at all. It would be a fun blog to read (the OP of the thread was interesting to comment on). However, absolutely no extrapolation beyond the actual subjects of the event should be done. This will not tell us anything about a larger population in any reliable way. In fact, it will not even give us information that we could use to extrapolate about the subjects themselves (how they might behave in different rpg scenarios, with different characters, in non-rpg venues, etc). I only comment on this because gender is somewhat of a touchy issue (as is any classification of people)...and it's far too easy to design an "experiment" to test gender differences, only to confirm one's own personal stereotypes (without ever meaning to do that). If this were an experiment of "are players of wizards able to step out of the box and play fighters? Do they still approach conflicts as wizards?" I'd be much less cautious about people taking it as more "scientific" than it is. [/QUOTE]

Verification