A Curmudgeonly Public Service Announcement

[gurdymonkey]

Dear Messrs. Barratt, Cahill, Carlen, Huck, Lurker and Ploskonka,

Please do not call your little exercise a "blog game" in the hopes of duping me into participating in an experiment. It's quite obviously not a game, but some sort of study in which you are collecting information on the relative affluence of blog users on this (and possibly other) journal groups.

You will forgive me if I prefer not to  "share"  information about my socio-economic status on a public internet forum.

Thank you for your attention. 

EDIT: http://wbarratt.indstate.edu/socialclass/social_class_on_campus.htm

Comments

[gurdymonkey.livejournal.com]

Ah, but how much of an expectation of meme-sheep behavior did they have in planting this on blog-sites?

[aureellia.livejournal.com]

Blog sites offer the information on blog site behavior. You cannot get that information anywhere other than a blog site. The researchers do not seem to be assuming that the behavior is sheep-like since they put their names on it. (Making it very easy to track what their interests are in social science circles by anyone who would bother to look it up.) I have been in on those meetings where we design social experiments. They know that some folks will look it up. I think it was remarkably honest of the researchers.

Some people will automatically do what their friends are doing. Some will look up the names of the researchers and go "OMGZ!!! THIS IS RESEARCH!!" and some will go "Oh hey, names. Must be resesarch. K. Whatever." In fact, that could be what they are researching.