Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Survey Research

As I have mentioned in previous blogs, blogging has become increasingly popular. It has not ony become an outlet for people to share thoughts and opinions, but it has also become a social media. What is so great about blogging, is that anyone can do it. Not only can anyone blog, but anyone can read a blog; it's just a matter of stumbling across one on the internet. To some, this poses a problem. As bloggers become more well-known and their blogs become more creative, the issue of privacy is brought up because many bloggers write (or rant) about family, friends, and the companies they work for. Some bloggers are careful about using only first names in their blogs about the people they blog about and some bloggers even go as far as keeping their own identities a secret. In a survey conducted back in 2004, 492 people responded to a questionnaire asking about privacy issues and blogging. Out of the 492, 486 completed the online questionnaire well enough to use for data analysis. Some of the results were:
- the great majority of bloggers identify themselves on their sites: 55% of respondents provide their real names on their blogs; another 20% provide some variant of the real name (first name only, first name and initial of surname, a pseudonym friends would know, etc.)
- 76% of bloggers do not limit access (i.e. readership) to their entries in any way
- 36% of respondents have gotten in trouble because of things they have written on their blogs
- 34% of respondents know other bloggers who have gotten in trouble with family and friends
- 12% of respondents know other bloggers who have gotten in legal or professional problems because of things they wrote on their blogs
- when blogging about people they know personally: 66% of respondents almost never asked permission to do so; whereas, only 9% said they never blogged about people they knew personally.
- 83% of respondents characterized their entries as personal ramblings whereas 20% said they mostly publish lists of useful/interesting links

Respondents for this survey were not randomly picked like other surveys are. This survey was announced through mailing lists within MIT and was also published on well-known blogs written by people who the author of this survey knew. The rest of the results along with a study populations complete with charts and graphs can be found on the website provided by the link above.
Surveys are very useful. They can be used anywhere for any topic to help find results to a question. Even on the issue of privacy within blogging as this form of media becomes more than just an online diary.

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