The Love Goddess states: " ...the majority of hobbyists are not the disturbed or violent individuals that some have made them out to be.

You reached a conclusion before you analyzed the results of your survey. Your out to prove a point, not to present an unbiased analysis of the TER community.

Sorry Love Goddess, if I was your professor, you would have to do a do-over.

Dear WebDesigner_VA,

I can understand why you are concerned, but you needn't be. This study does include several hypotheses, based on anecdotal evidence. While I'm not going into them on this board, it is up to the numbers to see if these hypotheses will be null or not. My solicitation posting does not imply that I have "reached a conclusion" - it is merely my hope that the results will go in this direction. This is not the same as using the data to "prove a point."


I'm assuming you are a college professor of methodology doubling as a WebDesigner?

No need to respond to my posting
The Love Goddess

-- Modified on 9/28/2009 12:56:47 PM

Had to chime in, as a profesor in a social sciecne research area.

All research is biased--the researcher chooses the problem and writes the research questions.  This is a given in social science research (and applies to the othe sciences as well, although those folks don't like to admit it).

But, if the anecxdotal evidence is suggesting a hypothesis to be tested (technical term in the research community, so I assume that is how it is used in this post), and the hypohtesis is improproperly stated, then we have a problem (that is, it seeks to prove an claim rather than explore a claim, we have a problem.  Testing a hyothesis can result in one fo two outcomes: reject the null or fail to reject the null (the claim being tested)--you can't "prove" anything.