PoE players, the mentally healthier people?

Quite right, it's not the done thing to derail people's research participant seeking threads, no matter how thought-provoking the topic is.

"

ArgentumWulf wrote:

Tala moana, warrior,

TL;DR version of the text below:

I (PoE player since Incursion and current PhD student at VuW, NZ) want to investigate empirically (meaning using data rather than assumptions) possible connections between playing (or rather using) video games, a person's wellbeing, and their personality.
For this I need participants (the more participate, the more reliable and representative my results will be) who would fill in two questionnaires (one on game usage, one on wellbeing, personality, and demographics) taking about 10 minute each. Besides general demographic information no personal information is required, unless you win one of the vouchers (for NZ$50 each) offered, then I will need an e-mail address.
Anyone who plays video games more or less regularly is warmly invited to participate!
You can find the links to both questionnaires on the study's website at https://game-usage.weebly.com/surveys.html.

(This research has been approved by the Victoria University of Wellington (VUW) Human Ethics Committee [application no. 0000025324]. It is not affiliated with GGG or any other company or institution besides VUW).

Thank you!
Florian

Maybe make a thread about it Rexeos as the mods here don't split topics.

"

鬼殺し wrote:

"

Rexeos wrote:

"PoE players, the mentally healthier people?"

Title already says, incompetent person looks for "truth" where is none and is solving own issues by "using" others.

What does it mean mental health and healthier than who?

Only who can say who is healthier is a doctor and not psychologists. Educated by school psychologists, priests and whatever religion representatives are manipulators. Its good to listen to everybody and make own decision, but stay under their wings means to be insane and to buy and lives by lies.

If you're not going to help this guy with his academic study, I strongly suggest you stay the fuck out of his thread. This thread isn't for discussing your personal ideas of psychology or doctors or frankly any of your other opinions. Please stop derailing with your barely coherent rambling.

If you're not going to help this guy with his academic study - your assumptions is wrong. Not only I put time to answer questions for his work... actually mine post help him a tone, if he is not a snowflake as you are.

I strongly suggest you stay the fuck out of his thread. - your aggressive rhetoric is still the same.

This thread isn't for discussing your personal ideas of psychology or doctors or frankly any of your other opinions. - Its not your topic and there are no rules. You still act like you know everything and I assure you, you dont.

Please stop derailing with your barely coherent rambling. - your hypocrite behave can be seen in many topics. If you dont understand its better to ask than to be offensive.

„Hate speech is not free speech, it depends how you define hate speech. The only speech that is not free speech is speech openly defends or pushes violence. Its basically speech that is generating violence. That is only of speech that is not free speech. If somebody says things you dont like its not hate speech. And if you think that it is hate speech than you are fascist. End of story.“
Ben Shapiro

Both surveys completed Florian.

Cheers from Canada

Thanks DoubleU (and to the others who have completed the questionnaires in the meantime) :-)

I just realised I haven't answered your second question yet, erdelyii. Personally I am a fan of mixed methods research, too. The first stage of my study were interviews and focus groups with players of various games to find out what they thought are relevant variables to describe and distinguish how they use games. The pilot study version of the game usage questionnaire was mainly based on the results of those interviews.

@Rexeos You mention a few very interesting points here. I disagree, however, with your statement that there is no truth; just that we haven't found it yet does not mean it does not exist, and I am the kind of person who will keep trying to find it, or at least getting close to it. That is, in my eyes, what research is about. And yes, you are right that I need to be careful with keeping my thoughts and assumptions apart from my observations and findings; and making clear which is which when I report back on it.
Your second question/comment about mental health touches on a very contested topic (in my eyes there is too much to say about that than would fit nicely into this post without derailing it, as 鬼殺し has pointed out). A shortish answer is that with mental health I refer to "positive psychological functioning" (eudaimonic wellbeing if you want to google it). And with healthier I am referring to non-users of games and users of other games. There are reasons to believe that playing games can have positive impacts on mental health (again, there is far more to say here).
Thirdly, doctors are (well, some of them, anyway) good for physical health, but what good is a healthy body for person who is not feeling well? Just the other day a friend's friend has committed suicide nearby, despite having been "healthy", while a friend with several chronic diseases is still living life to the fullest (well, within physical limitations). It's an extreme case but highlights the role mental wellbeing plays in our lives.
Finally, I completely agree with your last point and I believe it can't be emphasised enough: While it is good to listen to others, it is crucial to form your own opinions and take everything with a grain of salt, as this may keep you from falling for lies.
On that note, I enjoy discussions like this (maybe a little too much), but I would prefer doing so in a different post as this is only marginally related to the intended topic of this post :-)

@鬼殺し I have tried recruiting through several forums and reddit (with mediocre success, as you can imagine, usually it quickly moves away from the first page and no-one reads it anymore).
But yes, even recently I still get some non PoE players, though I do not know where participants heard about the study since I don't collect any of that information for anonymity reasons.

"

ArgentumWulf wrote:

I just realised I haven't answered your second question yet, erdelyii. Personally I am a fan of mixed methods research, too. The first stage of my study were interviews and focus groups with players of various games to find out what they thought are relevant variables to describe and distinguish how they use games. The pilot study version of the game usage questionnaire was mainly based on the results of those interviews.

I noticed, Wulf (I'm way less Australian that Charan, as he's from Sydney), and figured it wasn't about me here and I was asking with something to share on my mind that I don't tend to share online, so didn't press it. Thanks for coming back to it, and really good to hear a little more of your methods.

For an anecdote, my experience has been that immersion in Wraeclast in my spare time helped me to recover from a complete, devastating breakdown that took me right offline (as though that was the worst impact, ha) for a period. After some point though, grinding out challenges was also was a safe and dull trap and continuation of a habit that I stayed in far longer than probably needed.

I think the game in all its glorious detail and mechanics helped rebuild some really messed up neural connections, and gave me a break from my incessant thoughts and the hard work of recovery I was dealing with.

Positive psychology is such a great field to be researching in; strengths-based approaches can be so powerful.

"

ArgentumWulf wrote:

[To Boem] On that note, I enjoy discussions like this (maybe a little too much), but I would prefer doing so in a different post as this is only marginally related to the intended topic of this post :-)

That was well-put, the whole answer.

Filled out both surveys, always happy to provide for pioneering academic studies that are directly related to my day to day life.

I'm actually highly interested to see the conclusion which is drawn from the data you eventually gather, and i'm tentatively hopeful that a positive outlook may provide a basis in future for convincing my friends and colleagues that it isn't such a bad thing for me to spend the majority of my free time playing online games. (A fair few of them have a strong belief that it's bad for my mental health not to be socialising with people face to face.)

I'll do my best to motivate some of my online friends to contribute to your survey, I can probably get around 10 people to answer eventually so I hope that helps :)

+1

As a person involved not only in psychology for few decades in theory and praxis, I also like to discuss such a topics. Place for a such discussions usully, as you are mentioning, should be taken on different post, imo should be also taken at different places, as some individuals are getting burned just only by reading such a stuff and than they act like paladins in silver shiny armor with shield full of blood or making unhelthy alliances.

Nevertheless I would assume, if you did not already, try to look at what you are looking for as a symptom of symptom..

ps: btw truth is great word, it takes many years to catch what it "really" means.. I never met person who was able to solve that riddle faster/earlier..

gl hf :)

ps: just a thought that get throug my mind right now.. arent you looking in the end for another/new form of empowerment? .. no need to answer, its only philosohpical question

"

鬼殺し wrote:

blah blah blah you're done.

I assume its an "answer" to mine response..

If so: that is how your current life looks like.

@Zionyaru Thanks for participating and your thoughts on the topic. I hope it might influence the public's perception, too, especially that of professionals who often tend to draw conclusions from rather superficial observations.
It would be great if you could motivate some of your friends to participate, too. Thanks! :-)

@Rexeos Would you mind elaborating on that? I get the idea that using games in certain ways may be a "symptom" of (or influenced by, as I would usually write it) players' lives (to keep it general and unbiased), but what do you mean by "symptom of a symptom" ?
And regarding the philosophical aspect, I think it could turn out that in the end that is the case, yes :-)

@鬼殺し That was my experience, too. I was just lucky to have found two supervisors who trusted me enough to just go ahead and let me convince them. The downside, though, is that while they are good with research in general, they have no experience with my topic, so in the end I am on my own when it comes to the details.
What I was not expecting, though, was how difficult it would be to find participants. I guess I was naive thinking: "This topic is often discussed in media and to some degree affects all gamers and most schools, I am sure they will all be interested and gladly help!"
Instead schools "don't have time for that", many forums don't support "soliciting" questionnaires, or my posts move from the first page in a couple of hours and therefore are forgotten. At the moment I feel no-one really cares, or at least they don't care enough to offer 20 minutes of their time...

I took the personality test/questionaire and got these results

Open-Mindedness 2.8 (3.8)
Conscientiousness 3 (3.4)
Extraversion 2.3 (3.2)
Agreeableness 3.5 (3.7)
Neuroticism (or negative emotionality) 2.8 (3.0)