Video Game Behavior Survey...Thing

Hey, tropers. So I'm in this very important capstone class on Criminal Justice. It means doing surveys and analyzing the responses and stuff. Our group topic is whether or not playing video games affects a person's tendency to commit deviance. So if you guys would be willing to take a few minutes to fill it out, I'd really appreciate it.

Here it is. Thanks in advance, everyone!

Filled out the survey. Disappointed that "panic attack" isn't an option for the reaction choices.

Just did it. Good luck with your project!

Filled it out for you. Although my real answer to the highway question (lie on the ground in agony/dead because I ride a bike and they lose vs. cars) wasn't on there.

Did it.

Yeah, the reaction questions could maybe use either a few extra choices or an "other (please specify)" option. In the rude guy online shows up at a party question, I would have just ignored the dude, not leave.

Done.

Yay, 77 responses!

I know, there are some limitations to this thing. I had originally put in an "ignore them" response, but my professor told me to take it out because he thought ignoring them and leaving the scene amounted to the same level of response severity. Shouldn't have listened to him, but he wouldn't approve the damn thing until I changed it.

Anyway, thank you all so much for taking the time to answer this thing. I really, really appreciate it. It's going to make this project a hell of a lot easier to handle now that I have a good pool of answers.

Threw my part in, as well. :]

(Just on surveys like this in general:) I get the feeling that bias might affect some answers, even if people are otherwise honest. I don't think gaming causes violence, but I figure most gamers would be reluctant to admit that they feel more aggressive after playing a game if they did. Or people who believe gaming causes violence, and have played a little, might answer inversely even if it's not the case. At the same time, I don't really know any way one could do a survey where it was subtle enough that it would be wholly representative, though.

edited 8th Oct '13 10:30:24 AM by Note-taker

Alright, did the survey.

BTW, why would the police be interested in the behavior of a typical gamer? Did something happen in your community that brought gaming to the forefront, or is it just a project you decided to research? Just curious.

I ended up going with "ignore them" for a few of those, although my actual response would have been to walk away while muttering various invectives about what inappropriate actions they presumably undertake with horses. You may want to edit in a note to ask people about filling in the response that most closely mirrors their reactions to account for the limited selection.

No no, not the police. I'm not a cop, I'm a college student. Before I graduate with my degree in Criminal Justice, I have to do a class called a Capstone Research Class, basically one big giant group research project of doom. We can pick pretty much any topic we want. And since I'm a nerdy gamer, I convinced my group to tackle the old problem of "Do video games make you an axe murderer?" (Obviously not, but I wanted to get some solid empirical evidence on whether or not being a gamer increases the tendency to commit deviance.)

(You know I had a feeling that you might've been the OP Accela.)

Finished the survey. I think it might've been better to have #4 be a "check all that apply" since I didn't feel like I could answer that completely accurately due to my eclectic videogame tastes.

edited 8th Oct '13 12:30:33 PM by rmctagg09

did the survey.

that was...pretty limiting.

As someone with a background in this sort of thing: this survey would work a lot better if 1) you did not tell people what the survey was about, and 2) you saved the questions asking about video game habits for the end of the survey.

With it clear what this is about, responses will be (subconsciously) biased. Few people want to look bad, and few people would want to feel bad about their choice of hobbies/entertainment.

I should note that in studying the result of the survey, you should be careful of "corellation vs. causation" and all that. Does violent gaming increase violent behavior? Or does violent behavior draw that person towards violence in games? Or is there a third factor causing both? (That is, assuming the correlation exists in the first place.)

Of course, I know. I'm not one of the people who believes video games cause violent behavior. I'm more inclined to believe that violent, disturbed people may be drawn to violent games.

I play plenty of violent games myself, and I do not have any noticeable tendency to shank anybody.

Completed!

I've never felt the urge to shank, but I have felt the urge to eat mushrooms and punch trees from time to time...

Take that, trees! That'll teach you to grow on my lawn!

Took the survey.

Took it, because why not?

I've never felt aggressive after playing games, though I'm generally not an aggressive or violent person anyway. That being said, the few times I play particularly violent games (Which is rare, since I mainly enjoy first-party Nintendo games), I abuse every Video Game Cruelty Potential available while giggling like a sadistic idiot. I'm the guy who will make a competition out of killing as many of the civilian NPC's as possible, or constructing elaborate torture devices, ect.

It's all about knowing the difference between fiction and reality. I could tell them apart at two years old or earlier (I don't remember much before two), which is probably why I'm such a sadist in fiction yet a pacifist in real life since I learned to keep them separate at a young age.

edited 8th Oct '13 10:06:32 PM by Anomalocaris20

I often feel less aggressive after playing games because catharsis.

He must have been at least partially right, because I assumed they were the same thing. And I think there's value in having a uniform answer pool across the questions.

Huh.

Regarding the divide between fiction and reality, it's easy for a person of sound, rational mind to keep the two separate and use the former for whatever horrific catharsis is necessary, but what changes might occur when the person's mind becomes less sound due to unforeseen circumstances? Could (e.g.) age-induced dementia cause them to think they're in a videogame and react accordingly?

edited 9th Oct '13 1:14:26 AM by recon5

Wow. That dementia bit is something I never thought about. Guess we'll find that out once today's gamers reach old age.

I filled out the survey. I'm generally not aggressive at all in real life. Defensive sometimes, but not aggressive. Heck, I'm usually too passive and non-confrontational for my own good.

As for morality in games, I'm the kind of person who can't bring myself to be a jerk even if the game lets me. Most of the games I play have you more likely to fight monsters than people, and if you do fight people they're always combatants. That said, over-the-top displays of violence (think God of War) make me uncomfortable, so I tend to avoid games with lots of that.

Basically, I don't think video games have any influence on my actual behavior. I know perfectly well how to separate the two, and I'm very much aware that fighting would not be fun in real life.