Experiment idea (please comment)

Hi, I'm a sociology student and I thought I might try and do something innovative for my coursework. Please have a look at this idea and tell me what you think.

Basically it's a study on what different parts of society don't like about their lives. I am looking to see a distinct difference in severity of issues depending on their location and their cultural background. This would be done through a forum where users sign up and just talk endlessly about what they hate. There's a map on it so I've already covered the problem of location and this also means anyone else interested can have a look at the results (please contact me seperately if you wish to do so as TOS don't allow links to other things like this). I've also tried to make it as usable and fun as possible so people stick with it and don't get bored thus giving (hopfully) the largest spread of results possible.

Anyway critical analysis please!!
Any other comments are also welcome but don't be mean if you don't like the idea please.
And if you're interested in taking part again please contact me privately.

Thanks a lot people I look forward to hearing from you!

Tom

you can put a link in your signature I think. I'm not sure how many points you need to have for it to work, but it's not very high.

cool how do you do that?

sorry n00b!

lol what you think of the idea?

well, I think it's fairly obvious that people from different social backgrounds will have different concepts of what defines good or bad in terms of quality of life. For some in Beverly hills, a disaster is if their costume falls apart, whereas in Africa, a disaster is if their water starts killing everyone. I don't think there's much that needs to be proven as far as that goes. But it would be interesting to read the personal accounts nonetheless. It could be useful for giving some spoiled rich people a little perspective...lol

To put a link in your signature, click on your name under your avatar. That will take you to your profile page. Under your name on your profile page will be a link that says "Edit profile" Click that. You will see different sections that you can put info about you in, including your signature. The signature needs to be written in "BBCode", not HTML, so a url would be [ url=https://yoururlhere.com ]whatever you want to label your link here[ /url ] but without the spaces in the brackets. That will come out as whatever you want to label your link here

Yeah I think so. It's also kind of psychological because one thing I wanted to look at (Although not officially) was how people interacted with one another in response to their posts, hence why it's a forum. I probably should have expressed that a little clearer in my thread but oh well.

will change my signature now.

thanks

There we go.

maybe not... lol

There's a limit on how long your signature can be, and no images allowed until you have I think 3000 points.

Unfortunately there are many problems with your 'experiment'. First is that you don't seem to have a theory behind it. Have you done research to see if anyone has done an experiment such as this? What is your hypothesis? What is the point of putting a random question out on the internet? What portion of the population are you targeting? Do you realize that by posting it online you have alienated a huge portion of the population. I am not saying this to be mean but you are obviously young in the field. There is a lot that you have not thought of and people should be commenting on more than how to create a link.

As stated, nearly correctly, first of all, in order to conduct an experiment, a hypothesis is necessary. Your question is so wide that it doesn't even enter into any particular field, since "rising prices" would quite possibly for instance be the first response of the lower class (like me, because it is after all economically defined), whereas for any who deemed to answer of the idle rich, the answer would necessarily be quite different. As stands the experiment actually seems to be how many people will respond to such a question, on the internet, and perhaps at what sort of site if you were to post this at more than one.

The variety of subjects alone chosen for response is nearly infinite. Part of the empirical paradigm is repeatability, and a large part of that is provided by exclusive defintions. What you are employing is the result of inclusive definition and per se doubtful in the realm of empiricism.
--Glenn

You're headed into an interesting direction, but you really need to narrow down your main goal as well as the above sugesstions. In order to get some feedback that is cohesive, try focusing on specific groups. What age, what race, what income, what location, what religion. These all play a factor in what people would define as a "problem".
Try reading other types of research, to see how it's done. For instance, Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser, or The Paradox of Choice by Barry Schwartz. These are some easy reads that can jump start the creative juices.