My diploma thesis - I need your help...

[moogli]

Hey guys,


I hope this is the proper category to post in...

For my diploma thesis at Saarland University, Germany, I'm examining the process of mate selection in the context of online social networks. Part of this cross-cultural study is an online survey which contains by now Data from Romania and - of course - Germany. Additionally to that, I need participants from the USA, and this has turned out to be much more complicated than I've imagined before...

From my past experience, I know that signing up and asking for help on a forum is not always welcome. But all I can say is that making an empirical study is just a part of getting my psychology diploma, i've got no choice on that and i'm dependent on voluntary support - just like all my fellow students also are. So if you like to help me out by participating, this really would be great! I'll take just 15 minutes of your time...

The following takes you to my post at a Psychology-related Discussionboard "Psychforums". You'll find additional information to the survey there, and of course the link to participate. Studys beeing posted on Psychforums must be first approved by forum staff, so this is kind of an approval that it isn't spam or something otherwise bad... I have had numerous problems with beeing accused for advertising a commercial and/or a junk-survey in the past...

Hmmm... as I cannot yet post links (my account is fresh)... Please check psychforums[dot]com, then the "Surveys & Studies" Section, and then you'll find my post on top, "Interesting survey: Mate selection & Online social networks". Thank you! (to the Moderators: Could you please edit my post and adding the proper link to my post at psychforums here?)


If you have any questions, please get me a message, and I'm glad to answer. Further, if you're in doubt about this beeing a reputable and non-commercial survey, please just get me a message and i'll provide contacts at my university that will confirm the non-commercial nature of this study.


Thanks for your support and best wishes from Germany,
Kilian

[doppelgaenger]

Lol, why did you choose this for a diploma thesis? My professors would laugh at me if I told them I was going to use forum data as the basis of my research. If you're trying to cut corners, let me tell you, it's a lot easier to just pick a more academic topic and read books. I hope it's not too late to change the topic.

You're going to have a really hard time trying to get random people on forums to cooperate with you for free. Posting here expecting people to help even though you're claiming it's free and for academic purposes is probably just going to irritate most people. This isn't the first request we've had to participate in "academic research", either.

[qwertz]

Yes, cause we all have the time to do such a thing.

[moogli]

I chose this because I think its an interesting subject. Further, it has been offered to me, and was previously explored by my thesis adviser. It turned out to make some pretty interesting results, overall supporting our hypotheses.

I know its always hard to find participants. Why should it be irritating to ask for help in a forum? Studies for a diploma thesis almost always suffer from a non-representative sample. For a representative sample instead, you need to pay. Thats what companies easily can do, but students cant.
Normally, we get our participants from our own faculty, of course limiting conclusions to "students of psychology, aged between 18 and 25"... Thats not representative either...

[Mathias]

Studies for a diploma thesis almost always suffer from a non-representative sample.

Yes, but you're just exacerbating this by coming to a forum where people come to post relationship problems.