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Second Survey of the Brony Subculture

Last posted Sep 28, 2012 at 07:38PM EDT. Added Sep 10, 2012 at 09:54PM EDT
116 posts from 66 users

Katie C. wrote:

Hey Verbose, for future reference, people from the Middle East are Caucasian.

"The term Caucasian race (also Caucasoid, Europid, or Europoid) has been used to denote the general physical type of some or all of the populations of Europe, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, Western Asia (the Middle East), parts of Central Asia and South Asia."

Another Protip: Many other countries have states and provinces

While technically correct, that is not useful for this survey.

My main background is sociology. I know that better than most. However, labeling White respondents and people of Middle Eastern descent neglects the huge perceived effects of being of Middle Eastern descent in America or other countries.

Basically, if I asked all technical Caucasians to identify as Caucasians, then I wouldn't be classifying them based upon the structural and sociological factors that I would be interested in. (i.e. People who look Middle Eastern and people who look White are not treated the same. Anywhere.)


I don’t know if anyone else had this problem, but whenever I clicked the next button it took me to the top of the page and I had to click next a second time to get to the next page. I finished the survey anyway, so no big deal.

I haven't heard that problem from anyone yet. What may have happened is that you skipped questions. That is fine. But we made all of the items "Soft-required." You'll basically have to hit the next button twice if you didn't answer all of the questions with a prompt saying that there are items you haven't answered yet.

Sidhe wrote:

Oh my god, I hate fluttershy stereotype so much and I wonder how many else hate it too. I'll be waiting for the results.

Actually, I expect Fluttershy to be one of the three favorites.

From what we saw in the last survey and in other smaller and larger surveys, Rarity is consistently the least favorite or least likely to be respondents' favorite. Applejack isn't as likely to be least favorite, but she's also less likely to the least favorite (she's not as polarizing as Rarity.)

Pinkie Pie gets a lot of favorite votes, but she's has worn on some people. Rainbow Dash is even more polarizing than Rarity, because a lot of people love Dash and quite a few hate her as well.

Twilight Sparkle is very rarely the least favorite and is often chosen as the favorite. Fluttershy also gets a lot of favorites and not too many least favorite votes.

We didn't want to ask why, so that we could keep the number of items somewhat low. But there are some other correlations that we hope to look at that we did not last time.


Speaking of, if you have any specific things you're interested in, then you should let us know. I can't promise that we'll run analyses for every correlation, regression, or PCA, but if people are interested in the same thing, then I think we should speak about it in the write-up, you know?

Greenstorm33 wrote:

This survey made me realize that I haven't actually sat down and watched an episode in over 2 months even though I engage in pony-related activity on a daily basis :|

Me, too.
I'm just awaiting Season 3.

I took your survey which I found to be well made honestly. But taking this survey I seem like a pretty boring brony.

>No Fanfics
>No Fanart (Well the closest I get to fanart is just looking at all the pictures on KYM)
>No clopping
>No major merchandise (I have a hat, only because I like to shave my head and it was a hot summer AND there was a Derpy Hat on sale!)

So much stuff I just said that I don't do. That being said I'm still a big fan of the show and realized I watch MLP every day (I watch the episodes on The Hub right before going to work)

That being said, Rainbow Dash is best pony and why the hell is "I want to Cum inside Rainbow Dash" the most viewed gallery?!

Last edited Sep 12, 2012 at 08:26PM EDT

Done and done. Actually satisfied with how well I did. :) A few quirks here and there.

Favorite secondary character. Cloudsdale Jocks are not there. fffffffffffFFFFFFF--- fine then, Derpy.

Doctor Whooves is not on the shipping list.

Realizes that none of the other alternate fanbases apply to me, with the exception of like three that MAY have applied like five years ago. ._.

Other then that, everything went smoothly.

A bit of advice: Atheism and Agnosticism are not mutually exclusive concepts. Many people who identify as one also identify as the other. An atheist is someone who does not believe in a god. An agnostic is someone who does not claim to know the truth of a specific claim; usually this claim is in relation to religion or spirituality. Thus, an agnostic atheist is someone who does not believe in a god and who does not claim to know as an undeniable fact that god definitely does not exist. I know you are only really concerned with the way people self-identify rather than what they actually are, but many people, including myself, choose to identify as both agnostic and atheist. Your religion question should really have the option to choose more than one category.

UnKewln00b wrote:

I took your survey which I found to be well made honestly. But taking this survey I seem like a pretty boring brony.

>No Fanfics
>No Fanart (Well the closest I get to fanart is just looking at all the pictures on KYM)
>No clopping
>No major merchandise (I have a hat, only because I like to shave my head and it was a hot summer AND there was a Derpy Hat on sale!)

So much stuff I just said that I don't do. That being said I'm still a big fan of the show and realized I watch MLP every day (I watch the episodes on The Hub right before going to work)

That being said, Rainbow Dash is best pony and why the hell is "I want to Cum inside Rainbow Dash" the most viewed gallery?!

Final Destination!

Whoo, where to begin…again. Haha.

Well, first off, thank you for taking the questionnaire. I really do appreciate it. I'd also like to thank KYM for helping us recruit. I just learned that the survey has been making the rounds on tumblr and on the front page. It's really helping us get a better representation of respondents.


@darkboo

I think it was in the instructions, but only characters that had been named in-show and had been voiced were considered secondary characters for the case of this. I did add her in the shipping item though…


@Ptylersworld and Discord

Both errors on my part. Once we started receiving responses and comments, that's when we noticed it. We (well, I spent) all of a Friday night and morning from 8p to 6a working on the questionnaire to make sure it was as good as I could get it. Apparently, we still missed things, one of which was an error from the last survey.

Fortunately, I think there was an option to add in missing characters, so that would cover it, but it would have been ideal to have both Spike and Dr. Whooves in the shipping item (and Spike in the secondary character one.) We simply left them out on accident, and to add them in now is to give the respondents who haven't taken the survey a different questionnaire than the ones who took it before.

It's a small difference, but we're wanting to apply the same methodology to all of the respondents. So hopefully, we won't make that same mistake again in the next survey.


@Aidyn

Much like Katie's concern, this was a matter of practicality in analysis. There are those who are Jewish and identify as Jewish and they hold Atheist or Agnostic beliefs. The first survey had that as a "checkbox" option so that they could check multiple religions. But for the purposes of our analysis, we believed that many respondents would be able to easily decide which one best defines there religious beliefs.

So if you acknowledged that there was no way to know if a god existed and you believed that there was no god or deity, then you would pick the one you thought best described your opinions and beliefs.
 
Again, we are sacrificing accuracy for feasibility, and technically giving respondents the choice to choose more than one response would not be unfeasible. However, given that most people fro the previous survey chose only one option and that making a pie chart and other analysis is difficult with those sorts of options, we felt that it was best to limit responses to one for this item. Your suggestion is valid though. Thanks.


@Platus

All out, bro.

X wrote:

Troll Mode engage:

>Question 13.
>"Are you sexually attracted to FiM-stylized ponies?"
>Not "Are you a Ponisexual?"
>Not "Are you a Horsef***er?"
>mfw
%o


Also related (YES IT'S A PARODY MADE BY A BRONY):


All trolling aside, I didn't know Cite was helping you on this.
OH and be careful that /mlp/ might make a lot of "Ponisexual, actively telling EVERYONE,Changed sexual orientation, some obscure (or lulzy) ship such as Holy Smokes x Rumble(Priest X Youngboy)" and other responses that fit that stereotype, and pin it on Ponychan. So if you get a lot of responses like that, don't be surprised.

I miss you, GMasterRed.
I must admit, that video was funny, and so were his thread simulator videos.

The survey is biased towards artistic people. I've done hundreds of hours of coding for the community, but the options for how active you are are all for fanfic writers, musicians etc. Not everyone's an artist, but the options don't reflect that. You'll get incorrect data when you don't have a wide enough span of options.

Nash wrote:

The survey is biased towards artistic people. I've done hundreds of hours of coding for the community, but the options for how active you are are all for fanfic writers, musicians etc. Not everyone's an artist, but the options don't reflect that. You'll get incorrect data when you don't have a wide enough span of options.

That is a fair point. Our questions were biased towards the more visible aspects of the fandom, such as writing fics and making fanart. Coding MLP-related sites isn't really high-profile, even if some people devote a lot of time to it. But the same is true for websites in general, I think; coders toil in anonymity, despite being instrumental to the running of the internet. But that's getting beyond the point.

Let me just say this though. The data might be unrepresentative, but it will not be 'incorrect'. But, I don't know if there are really THAT many people who spend their time coding MLP-related sites or games, and my reason is this:

To me, watching a highly-coloured childrens' cartoon doesn't seem to provide the inspiration to pore through hundreds of lines of code. It seems to me that it might be more likely to inspire people to become more artistic, which is where I think that our bias is coming from. People who create games might find a home under "Creating Fan Animations," as well.

Well, some people might be inspired to do new things, but a lot of people are just going to stick to what they're good at and apply that to ponies. Though how many people are actually coders is another question.

Still, someone has to code all those pony websites. There should be an amount of coders about equal to the amount of pony websites. I don't think coders really identify as creating fan animations, even if they work on games.

There might also be other options missing.

Anyway, I've pointed out the issue I noticed, you may make of it what you will.

burning_phoneix wrote:

Miss him, he still makes these videos doesnn't he?

I mean, he was a regular on the website before getting angry at things similar to what Anormulus hates on KYM and its community, and some other stuff I recall.
That's a shame, really. If I knew sooner that he made such great videos…

Last edited Sep 14, 2012 at 08:32PM EDT

Tomberry wrote:

I mean, he was a regular on the website before getting angry at things similar to what Anormulus hates on KYM and its community, and some other stuff I recall.
That's a shame, really. If I knew sooner that he made such great videos…

Huh…know I know why referred to the old survey as "done by some chucklefucks at Knowyourmeme" XD

@Lea

Yep. There are traditionally only two genders. However, some people believe that neither gender describes them. Also note that in other areas of the world, there are traditionally more than two genders.

And/But since the Western world is just becoming more accepting of the idea of there being more than two genders (although many people do not,) we felt as if:

  1. People might not be as aware of the gender they would want to identify with just yet, so we added "Not Sure."
  2. There wouldn't be enough numbers from the other non-traditional gender to constitute having many other options for other genders, so we only had "Other" as a choice.
Last edited Sep 16, 2012 at 04:53PM EDT

interweblord wrote:

I want to cum in Rainbow Dash.
Love, /mlp/

Well, now we know what it's like over there: just like the rest of 4chan.

The power of deduction at work, gentlemen.

Last edited Sep 18, 2012 at 10:40PM EDT

Fridge wrote:

Well, now we know what it's like over there: just like the rest of 4chan.

The power of deduction at work, gentlemen.

It's quite schizophrenic.

You'll have a thread saying something like "FUCK ALL THE HORSEFUCKERS I HATE THEM ALL!" Right next to a "Post your favourite clop art" thread.

404 user not found wrote:

So uh… Wheres the results?

On the other side of about two weeks of cleaning, analysis, and write-ups. And it won't be a consecutive two weeks.

I'd expect about six weeks or so now? Perhaps less depending upon my work load (but if the work keeps up like this, then it will be backburner priority indefinitely. I should hope not though.) opspe will likely be done with his analysis much sooner than mine. He works quickly. I procrastinate like a grad student.


I think most "casual" surveys just present what is called "Descriptive Statistics." That being averages, histograms (for totals of kinds of responses) and things like that. Neat graphs, no talky.

I should consider doing that, presenting those statistics, and then continuing on with the statistical tests where we can assess correlations, check for significant differences between groups, and take the data further in regards to inferential statistics.



 
Um, it's gon' be a minute.

Hey guys, I just wanted to reiterate that if you need some help with editing for grammar and spelling, I'm still willing and able. I'll be looking forward to the results!

I guess that this won't be the last brony survey, so is it possible to discuss questions for the next survey?

I am not sure if you have dismissed this idea, but the "love&tolerate" catchphrase could raise an interesting question for the survey. It is the inoffical brony slogan from the early days of the fandom and has survived until today. Some people really took this slogan to heart and for other fans it is just a couple of (meaningless) words to anger trolls with. It didn't really originate from the show, but the slogan persisted and became a kind of stigma worth printing on shirts.

Well i will wait for the results first.

@Whitishcollar

My personal preferences is to keep this open so people can discuss potential items for the next survey.

I think the most commonly posted concern was with all of the sexual questions. I didn't think there were that many, but I'm just one guy. It's also up to opspe and CitationNeeded, but I would certainly prefer there to be more than just us three discussing the items and the choices.

It didn't work as well as I would have hoped this time or the last time. We missed responses that should have been there and I've gotten a couple of comments about how people felt after taking the survey. My IRB training is being activated, and even if you can skip the questions, I'm beginning to be concerned for the participants.
 
 
 
Oh…brony slogan. Yes.

I think that 35-40 items is at the upper end of the number of items I would want the survey to have. 20-25 would be a minimum. I would like to drop some items, so there might be space for that (I think I'm finding the "Is FiM the best show ever created?" question to be less interesting that I had thought, but we'll see.)

Verbose wrote:

On the other side of about two weeks of cleaning, analysis, and write-ups. And it won't be a consecutive two weeks.

I'd expect about six weeks or so now? Perhaps less depending upon my work load (but if the work keeps up like this, then it will be backburner priority indefinitely. I should hope not though.) opspe will likely be done with his analysis much sooner than mine. He works quickly. I procrastinate like a grad student.


I think most "casual" surveys just present what is called "Descriptive Statistics." That being averages, histograms (for totals of kinds of responses) and things like that. Neat graphs, no talky.

I should consider doing that, presenting those statistics, and then continuing on with the statistical tests where we can assess correlations, check for significant differences between groups, and take the data further in regards to inferential statistics.



 
Um, it's gon' be a minute.

I'l just be here then.

waiting.

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