In the next few weeks, Jacob and I will be running some research on influence and impression management in Facebook. If you’re a Facebook user and under 26, please consider taking this ten minute pilot survey. A pilot survey is a pre-test, and while these results won’t be used for publication, they will help us better tune our survey instrument to get better results.
Here’s a link to the survey:
If that link doesn’t work, this should:
http://www.ibiblio.org/fred/survey/index.php?sid=83786
A couple quick notes: the final survey will be sent to undergraduate students, hence there are a lot of college references in the instrument. Feel free to leave any thoughts here as comments, or just email them to me directly. Thank you for your help!
Tags: facebook, social networks
Fred, tell Jacob good job on the survey. I’ve done a couple of my own so I thought I’d offer up a little feedback.
Overall – Number the questions for reference. The survey timed out on me twice while I was writing this. Give enough idle time so someone can go to the bathroom or check their Facebook profile and come back. For pilot surveys sometimes a ‘don’t know’ category is good – if you get a lot of people responding this way then you can change the question or inquire further. You may wish to think about the full range of possible answers respondents can give an assure questions are asked in a neutral fashion that allow all possibilities to find a place.
Group 1, question 1 – consider increasing the range. You may want to distinguish the question – total friends vs. friends on your primary network.
Group 1, question 2 – you will likely have to adjust this range some after this prelim feedback.
Group 2, question 3 – applications used and installed – ever or at this time? I’ve installed and tried many more than I’ve kept…
Group 2, question 5 – you may want to give examples or specifics when you say ‘get less out of’ – less exciting, less useful, less community, etc…
Group 3, question 4 – you may wish to consider splitting parents and authority figures. Not everyone’s parents are authorities, especially once you reach college. My boss or professors are a far cry different then my parents. Also you could add a category right after ‘they will friend me’ – try making ‘I will friend them’ – some people use the system more assertively than others.
Group 3, question 5 – specify if content includes groups and applications. Most people belong to groups and use applications their friends have – this content or style or profile wouldn’t be very different or individual. The ‘about’ section or ‘quotes’ or actual uses of those applications would probably be a new arena for individuality. For instance, I’ve seen an application I like and use on another person’s profile. I add it to mine and use it differently. Am I including jokes, content, or styles of other profiles?
Group 4, question 1 – define what is takes to be ‘updated’ – does that include changing your status? Using an application?
Group 6 – Race and/or ethnicity? You may wish to include this, depending on your sample size. Also frat/sorority membership might be interesting.
And then there’s that age thing. At 24 years of age I’m one of the very few who would be qualified to take this survey that didn’t begin college with Facebook. It plays such a crucial role in community and friendship formation in freshman these days… I find I’m typically on the border – substantial portions of my year use it less intensively or differently than the younger generations.
Anyway, tell Jacob he can email me to talk more – my Masters paper is under revision this semester but includes many of the topics covered in the survey!
Cheers-
Jeff,
Thanks for the excellent feedback! We’ll definitely incorporate, and we really appreciate your time.
Best,
Fred
Nice survey!
– How many Facebook applications have you used or installed?
Do you mean ever? Or currently installed/using? If you mean “ever”, you should probably increase the ranges available — my bet is that most people have installed (and then possibly uninstalled) over 11 applications during their Facebook time. It would be easy to do that over the course of an evening. Also, are you counting Facebook-sponsored applications (e.g. Events)?
It was confusing to me that the disagree/agree switched sides depending on the question.
Does “updating Facebook” include twitter-like status updates? They aren’t substantial, so if you want them to be counted, I’d list them explicitly.
The final question, “How confident are you in your decisions about the following future scenarios?” — I’m not sure what that means.