The Search for the Average eRepublikan - Survey Background

Day 1,330, 20:38 • Published in USA USA • by Chutley




THE SEARCH FOR THE AVERAGE eREPUBLIKAN – SURVEY BACKGROUND


First of all, thank you to the 274 of you who submitted entries thus far. I was hoping to get 275, but whatever.




“Chutley, we want the results of the survey NOW!,” says the impatient, though highly justified respondent.


Come now, do you really just want me to hand over a raw spreadsheet without explaining them in an inane series of articles? (Hint: the answer is “no”)


Good, because a series is exactly what I’m going to do. And trust me, if I presented everything all at once it would be majorly, majorly tl;dr ate rice, hummus, and mango salsa.





So, yes, I understand that you are all clamoring for results, but before I pass them along I would like to explain a few things about the survey so that you may better understand the numbers when they are presented.





Warning: If you’re not interested in details, you should probably stop reading here.


Purpose

To gather a lot of data on eRepublik users, analyze it, and report it back to you in the most entertaining way possible. I also wanted to make it fun to take – hopefully it wasn’t too bad.

That said, this survey does represent a form of actual research. I wanted to put pieces of you together and emerge with a fuller understanding of what the average user looks like, how he/she perceives him/herself, and of course, how many people he or she has porked.

Each question had its own purpose. Several friends suggested even inaner questions during the development stage of this survey, but, I had to reluctantly turn them down, even when they comically suggested polling people’s urination habits.










Methods

Obviously, this survey was given in order to gather interesting data about as many participating eRepublikans as possible. I was very happy with the amount of entries, as anything over 100 would have been, for me, an adequate sample size.

Sidenote: don’t worry, I’m not going to go into any complex statistics; firstly, because that’s boring; and secondly, because I f*cking hate it.

The survey questions were chosen in an attempt to provide a semblance of balance between subjectivity and objectivity. In other words, your height and weight are factual, but your answer to whether you are “Fat” is an opinion, even though the former answer may contradict the latter.

More importantly, the same is mostly true of the tangentially related questions like if you like Star Trek (basically factual) versus how “dorky” you feel you are (opinion). I think most of us would agree that that proclivity is one that many people associate with dorkiness. So, to speak in extremes, if 80% of people like Star Trek, but only 20% of people said they were below average in dorkiness, we have discovered a relative aberration among our masses. The same is true with athleticism versus playing a varsity sport (though I realize the two are by no means mutually inclusive).







Another issue to conquer is the inevitability of entries that are, shall we say, less than truthfull. mccvii put it extremely well in the comment section. Much of what he said is spot on, so I forgive him for not knowing my name:


… Some people are going to lie. If the results come back that a large percentage of users are sexually active, tall, athletic, attractive, genuinely happy people who are not infatuated with porn, marketing science tells us that those respondent are more likely diametrically opposite. ie, lethargic, un/under educated, social recluses who keep a bottle of crisco oil and a roll of paper towels next to the computer.

Others are going to do the opposite. They will purposefully answer the questions in an attempt to self-deprecate. ie, A short, fat, uneducated, basement-dwelling, unattractive, fumbling, douchbag. They may answer this way thinking that it is funny and that it will cloud the results. In actuality, these answers are generally closer to the truth that the respondent may care to admit.

A third group will attempt to answer the questions truthfully. These users will represent the lowest overall percentage and will answer the subjective questions more conservatively.

The beauty of it is that all 3 groups are useful in identifying the demographic of eRepublic. Whether or not Chutney realizes it, he has actually created a fairly good, albeit, unscientific demographic survey.


Thank you very much, mcvii. And yes, I did realize what I was doing.







Other questions were meant to weed out complete fakers, especially because the form could be filled out more than once. Once example is the drug question, which was multiple choice. A few people selected every option, even though one of them was “NONE.” Clearly anyone who answered that way should be disregarded – and they were.

I hate fake things. Well, usually…








Results/Interpretations

There were several parts to the survey, each of which yielded its own interesting results. I will report on each one. Here is a tentative agenda, subject to change depending on my wildly shifting whims:

Articles:

Part 1: Introduction (this article)
Part 2: Summary of The Facts (ie, Age, Height, Gender, etc)
Part 3: Summary of Vices
Part 4: Summary of Personality Perceptions
Part 5: Miscellaneous Observations
Part 6: The Average eRepublikan





Conclusion

In conclusion, have patience my fake friends. The results are forthcoming. I love you all, even the virgins.


Primitively,
Chutley