Demographic Survey?

I was considering, just for fun, doing a (completely anonymous) demographic survey of the forum's likes when it comes to vinyl dolls. Favorite brands, releases, how many dolls they own, etc. The plan was to host it with Google Forms, and I wanted to ask permission to do that just in case it would be inappropriate. If it is, I could make a non-anonymous version as just a form to fill out through a forum thread!

I can see no reason that would be inappropriate. We can see if @baldylox agrees. 

What is the reason for this other than "just for fun"?  What will the information provide and to whom?  Where will it be posted?  What is the end result that you want from this?

 

I'm not trying to sound hostile or against this, it's just that you haven't given much information on why you want to do this, the reasoning for it or the end use to the forum and community.  Please let us know more about this proposed project and we'll go from there.

Thank you,

 

Billy

I'd honestly be interested in some of the results, like brands owned and numbers. If it's anonymous, I don't see how it can harm anyone. It would be interesting to know how many people own both resins and vinyls, how many people own different types of DD like Pretty or Mochi Ashi, or different Obitsu lines like Iris Collect or Happiness Clover. 

50 minutes ago, BeyondTime said:

I'd honestly be interested in some of the results, like brands owned and numbers. If it's anonymous, I don't see how it can harm anyone. It would be interesting to know how many people own both resins and vinyls, how many people own different types of DD like Pretty or Mochi Ashi, or different Obitsu lines like Iris Collect or Happiness Clover. 

Not a mod, but I also don’t see how it would be a problem if it was anonymous and would be interested to see the results (although whether it can truly be anonymous with Google is another question…)

If it runs through Google forms, then nobody on the forum would be forced to participate anyway.  So people would be free to participate or ignore, depending on how they feel about their privacy.

As someone who has used Google forms before, if you host a survey and set it to not require Google login, you can't directly tell who answered. But you can look at all the answers of a single person and possibly infer who it may have been. That may be something to keep in mind. - How much Google itself is able to see and infer from your answers? Who knows...

The results would certainly be interesting to see, and maybe even help with the forum structure? (E.g. usefulness of a Tinyfox subforum.)

It still would be interesting to hear from @PlasticJester how they're planning to present the results in the end.

Sounds interesting !! If it ends up happening I will participate : )

6 hours ago, Tierparkzone said:

E.g. usefulness of a Tinyfox subforum.

That's one of the reasons I am interested. It would be nice to know about changes in people's interests. Tinyfox generates a lot of posts. That thread has 1900 replies and close to 200k views, and it's only 4 years old. It's one of the most active threads on the forum. 

4 hours ago, Tierparkzone said:

As someone who has used Google forms before, if you host a survey and set it to not require Google login, you can't directly tell who answered. But you can look at all the answers of a single person and possibly infer who it may have been. That may be something to keep in mind. - How much Google itself is able to see and infer from your answers? Who knows...

This is going to be true of pretty much any survey you take. Data science nerdery below.

In a formal research survey, this is why all participants must sign informed consent waivers in order to have their data added to the pool. While the odds are low that someone could identify specific individual participants based on their responses, they are not zero, so raw data inherently carries some level of risk. Competent research scientists will randomize the data in order to disconnect data points from each other (such as separating your number of DDs from your number of SmDs) and use aggregate totals (i.e. ~10% of DD owners have 20 or more dolls, for example) to add extra anonymity on the back end before publishing. However, the raw data is still stored somewhere and, in spite of anyone's best efforts, there is always the possibility that it could be accessed by outside individuals.

In a Google Forms survey, it is likely that your data is going to be less secure and isn't going to be scrubbed/randomized for increased anonymity, as this is a casual voluntary survey not connected to an IRB, unlikely to cause participants personal harm, and isn't going to be used in any kind of hardcore academic research capacity. Any ultra-formal survey would be done in a program like Qualtrics.

I would be interested in a survey like this, since the data would be neat to look at, but anyone concerned about their anonymity and data security should abstain from participating.

Wow, didn't expect this many responses!

Essentially the survey would just be for fun and for anyone who is interested in seeing the data. I would put the results together and publish them for the forum to see, so we could see out of the people surveyed some stuff like, say, how many DD owners there are compared to SmD owners, how long people have been in the community for, or how popular certain dolls are; this started because I was interested in letting people type in their favorite doll releases!

I am far from a statistics major or very math-savvy, so I understand if people don't want to trust me with that kind of data. However, I plan on making it fully anonymous and without featuring identifying questions beyond "how long have you been in the community" and how many dolls they have or what kinds. If anyone would like to jump in to help make the survey more secure, or voice any ideas on how to eliminate potential concerns, I'm absolutely fine with that! I'm mostly interested on a personal level in designing questions I think would be interesting for people to answer, like their favorite companies.

33 minutes ago, PlasticJester said:

I am far from a statistics major or very math-savvy, so I understand if people don't want to trust me with that kind of data. However, I plan on making it fully anonymous and without featuring identifying questions beyond "how long have you been in the community" and how many dolls they have or what kinds.

As long as you don't go for the low hanging marketing questions like age, gender or nationality - which could help to identify a person behind its username - it's probably not much of an issue.

If you deduce from my answers about which dolls I own and how long I've been in the hobby, that these answers were given by user "Tierparkzone", then this deduction is based on information that was available about me on the forum in the first place. - Only in a more easily readable format and perhaps a bit more detailed. - It doesn't really give away anything that links the user "Tierparkzone" to me as a person.

And if you're not sure about a question, you could also make it optional, and people can just skip it if they're uncomfortable answering.

6 hours ago, PlasticJester said:

this started because I was interested in letting people type in their favorite doll releases!

Not sure what google allows, but some surveys do a thing where a specific response opens up more questions. Like asking someone if they own Volks Dolls, SmartDolls, Obitsu dolls, and if they only check Volks and Obitsu, they see just questions related to Volks and Obitsu and not SmartDoll. You could then ask about specific products and releases without bombarding the people who don't own dolls from those companies with a bunch of questions that aren't relevant. 
 

6 hours ago, Tierparkzone said:

If you deduce from my answers about which dolls I own and how long I've been in the hobby, that these answers were given by user "Tierparkzone", then this deduction is based on information that was available about me on the forum in the first place.

If you ask how many dolls I own, that will quickly connect someone to me, so anonymizing the data could be important. As long as the survey is about topics that are public on the forum anyways, I'm just not sure it matters, because, as @Tierparkzone suggests, it's already connected to us and we're open about it. Presumably the survey isn't going to ask about non doll related things that people probably wouldn't answer truthfully anyways, like:

How many dolls do you own: 24

Do you hang out in rough sex bars? Oh hell no! (He says as he quietly hides his ball gag and gimp suit.)

 

The stuff we might not want connected to us, isn't going to be on this forum, so this forum's normal topics should be pretty safe. Even the AP thread, you either participate or you don't, and some of the participants were at the LA Dolpa, so they don't even care if people know who they are. 

Edited Sunday at 09:43 PM by BeyondTime
Removed extra 2.

5 hours ago, BeyondTime said:

The stuff we might not want connected to us, isn't going to be on this forum, so this forum's normal topics should be pretty safe. Even the AP thread, you either participate or you don't, and some of the participants were at the LA Dolpa, so they don't even care if people know who they are.

Not that I think it’s going to be a problem for this kind of innocuous survey, but sometimes stuff we shared that seemed harmless at the time or that we may have even forgotten about can be taken in aggregate to paint a picture about us or even enable people to identify us without us being aware of it.

Even if you’re okay with people knowing something about you at one point in time, that might not be the case in several months or years’ time. It can be hard to foresee or prevent something like that, especially if you don’t even remember sharing that info in the first place.

I’m hesitant to say “well it’s on you because it’s publicly shared information” because you never know exactly how it will be used down the line or who will pick up on it.

I’ve been able to identify Reddit users and even people on this forum as people I know irl just from random but very specific things they’ve written that they probably never would have imagined would be incriminating, and that was just me picking up on subtle cues (i.e., I didn’t have to dig very far). The stuff you share sometimes tells people more about you than you’re aware of, and you might not actually be okay with that if you knew…

I realize it’s a moot point because it’s so hard to foresee and prepare for, but I also think it’s more complicated and frankly terrifying than most people realize…

Edited Sunday at 09:45 PM by ragnamuffin
Formatting

48 minutes ago, ragnamuffin said:

Not that I think it’s going to be a problem for this kind of innocuous survey, but sometimes stuff we shared that seemed harmless at the time or that we may have even forgotten about can be taken in aggregate to paint a picture about us or even enable people to identify us without us being aware of it.

I can think of a certain doll maker who is known for connecting customers accounts at his store to their Facebook profiles using internet sleuthing.
Sleuthing probably made more powerful by access to his father's billions.

There are probably anecdotal stories I have shared here that could connect me to people who know me. Adding in my style of writing might even make it super obvious. The only way to inoculate myself against that would be to separate my real world existence from my online existence completely, and that's probably not realistic; I am me after all, and even my frequent abuse of the semicolon might be a dead giveaway to anyone who has endured my writing. 😂

 

1 hour ago, ragnamuffin said:

I’m hesitant to say “well it’s on you because it’s publicly shared information” because you never know exactly how it will be used down the line or who will pick up on it.

Things can be used against you when mentioned to someone in the real world, and almost anything can be twisted into something it's not by a professional gaslighter. I guess I think we can't stop putting ourselves out there completely because someone might misbehave.

I do think it's not a good idea for people to post their location and identifying personal info on any social media or website. I have a friend who always posts her location on Facebook, so I always know when she's away from home, and so does every criminal who might be thinking of burglarizing her. Your real world friends and family already know those details, your online friend in Kathmandu really doesn't need to.

With all this discussion in mind, should I go forward with making a survey, wait for more deliberation, or abort?

I'd also be interested and would participate~

I don't really see an issue of potential ID with the kinds of questions this survey would have, especially if it's just generating information into one spot versus spread out across the forum.  What's the difference of someone answering how many dolls they have on a survey vs simply deducing it from a post that says "I have 17 dolls"?  If someone's gonna connect information across platforms, they're gonna do it regardless of the format they found it from, and it honestly isn't that much different than posting in a thread topic asking the same questions. 

I'm interested in how the information can be used to tailor board progress (TF subforum!!) and see trends in collecting.  Internet safety concerns are valid but I highly doubt a survey at this level is going to reveal anything critical to a user's life unless there's questions like "what's your annual income" lol.

1 hour ago, PlasticJester said:

With all this discussion in mind, should I go forward with making a survey, wait for more deliberation, or abort?

In case you go forward, I'd participate too.

4 hours ago, PlasticJester said:

With all this discussion in mind, should I go forward with making a survey, wait for more deliberation, or abort?

Let's let @baldylox give his opinion, since he seemed to have some reservations.

After reading all the replies, I see that this will be a popular thing and really cause no harm since all the info it will include is already here anyway.  I was only wondering what all the info would or *could* be used for by the OP but they've answered and I'm good with the reply they gave.

I wasn't trying to be a stick in the mud about this.  I genuinely had a few concerns about it and wanted answers to them.  I'm glad to see so many people wanting to participate and maybe this will give us more traffic too.  So please go ahead with this project.... I too will input to it.  Altho it will be immediately obvious to anyone who I am when it says how many dolls I own.  😉 

Also, I agree with @BeyondTime about the Tinyfox dolls needing their own sub-forum or full section.  We should ask Averis to go ahead with that to make things easier to find and share.

Thanks to everyone who replied here.   

 

Billy

Alright, I'm putting the survey together now! Any particular subforum you'd like me to place it in?

17 minutes ago, PlasticJester said:

Alright, I'm putting the survey together now! Any particular subforum you'd like me to place it in?

It's doesn't really fit any of the section headings. It belongs under community, but it's more of a general doll discussion thing and there isn't a general discussions area under community for on-topic doll discussions that aren't brand specific.

The best thing might just be to post it here. 

If you are open to suggestions, some things that might be interesting to know:

How many people take them out in public?

How many people have made their own custom doll?

How many people go to meets or doll related events?

How many people do doll photography?

How many people make things for their dolls?

How many people have learned a craft or skill specifically because of this hobby?

How many people travel with them?