Social Psychology Experiment; Results
A'hoy hoy,
I conducted a mass, random sample, survey through MSN and chat rooms. Conducted entirely on the internet, I randomly picked people from chat rooms and surveyed everyone on my MSN list on how they feel about a scenario. The survey consisted of two question: how they felt about the funding cut-back on "Herod's flu" research and if they felt threatened by it. The results are interesting. Many psychological aspects apply to this experiment and so there it entails a large report.
I'm curious what you, the psychology scholars of Dream Views, think of this experiments results. Considering experiments such as Darley & Batson's (1973), I decided this experiment would immediately eliminate diffusion of responsiblity considering I am directly asking individuals questions. Also, the manipulate the sense of time for my survey. To illustrate this, this is the first message in my survey:
Quote:
Hi there, I'm doing a survey and I was wondering if you would give me your opinion..? *It's just two questions.[/b]
"It's just two questions" manipualtes the sense of time and gives me a better chance of polling an audience.
My primary goal in this experiment was to see if individuals would take the time out of what they are doing to look up the disease "Herod's flu". If anyone were to look the disease up, they would find that it is a fictional disease from a novel. Considering the amount of multi-tasking done on the computer, I was curious how many would deliberately hault it to help me. Also, I wished to see if there was any difference on internet survey's as compared to field surveying or phone surveying.
Before I rant on, here are my results.
Results:
[list]
Offered opinion:
[list]
- Offered opinion and admitted ignorance:
- Believed they were safe:
- Concerned:
- Didn't care:
- Total:
[list]
Gave no opinion b/c of ignorance:
Looked up the definition of "Herod's flu":
Did not answer:
Total:
[list]
What I am finding interesting is that, according to the survey results, more people believed they were safe from a disease they knew nothing about or they didn't care. It was the minority of those surveyed were concerned (16%/76%). Perhaps this is an example of perceptual errors of reality?
I may post my psychological report on this experiment according to the amount of interest (views).
I appreciate any input you may have. Thank you very much.