[hackerspaces] Survey study about members of different hackerspaces

[jm60697]

Hi,

I would be interested about conducting a survey research among the  
members of different hackerspaces. The survey would be web-based and  
informants of the survey would be all hackers in various hackerspaces  
around the world.

The research would use statistical approach. The aim of the survey  
would be to find answers or at least some hints to following topics:

1. What is the members' age, gender, geoghaphical location, for how  
long has been a member of some hackerspace, etc...These factors would  
be used as background information and possibly as classification  
(control factors) in analysis.

2. Different roles of members. Is there similar onion-type structure  
which can be found from FOSS-communities? Of course some members could  
have multiple roles.

3. Motivation to participate. What are the motivations to participate?  
Is there similar model of motivation which has been found in FOSS  
communities?  
(http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1623/1538)

The above topic list definitely needs more thought and time, but those  
where the topics that came to my mind while writing my current thesis  
(about hacktivism) and this research is not included in it. The idea  
for this came just out of curiosity.

The survey would not be too hard to implement. Most (if not all) of  
the questions would be kind of predefined dropdown selection with an  
opportunity to add possibly missing option.

The results would probably give some empirically proven hints about  
the larger hackerspace community. The data of the survey and the  
results could also be used as a ground to write a short paper in some  
publication. I think that some publications would be interested about  
this kind of research. But I might be wrong...

I would be delighted if some others would be interested about doing  
this research with me. Anyone? Doing things alone is less fun than  
with others. Feel free to approach me through the list or directly off  
the list.

Obviously this list would be suitable to find a significant amount of  
informants, but not all. Any suggestions to find the rest of the  
hackerspaces which are not listed in hackerspaces.org or whose members  
are not on this list? Any feedback or ideas about this are most welcome.

cheers, yet-another-researcher Jarkko

P.S. The above might seem inadequately iterated or formulated without  
any depth, but I just got so exited about this so I had to post it as  
soon as possible.

****************************
  Jarkko Moilanen (phone: +358 46 640 8339)
  M.Soc.Sc. (Political Science)
  PhD Student, Information studies, University of Tampere
  Blog: Extreme activities in cyberspace - http://extreme.ajatukseni.net/
  -------------------------
  Founder of Hackerspace 5w, Finland, Tampere - 5w.fi
****************************
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