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lloyd
May 16th, 2006, 11:36 AM
To all users and developers of Ubuntu,

To begin my announced anthropological fieldwork in the Ubuntu
community (https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/sounder/2006-April/006113.html), I have constructed a questionnaire to gather basic and
relatively valid statistics on the community as whole. I call it a
census survey since there's no official register of people
contributing to Ubuntu [2]. In spite of the name, the survey will not
be used to keep track of individuals and their contributions to
Ubuntu. Instead, the objective is to examine statistically the
membership of the Ubuntu community:

- Who are joining the Ubuntu community and for what reasons.
- How they use computers in general.
- How is their relationship to the F/OSS world in general.

I hope that as many members of the Ubuntu community as possible will find the time to fill out the questionnaire - this data will help give an overview of where the Ubuntu community is now, and hopefully make it clearer where it is going.

The questionnaire consists of 5 sections and a total of 65 questions (excluding the comment fields). It should take around 15 minutes to complete, depending on your level of involvement in the F/OSS world, and the number of comments that you find you want to add while filling out the questionnaire.

You can find the Survey Questionnaire here:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=855442126391

All of the survey data I receive will be anonymized. Your name will
only be used to file the questionnaire. Your privacy will be protected as according to usual anthropological practice (http://ethics.iit.edu/codes/coe/aanta-1998.html).

I plan to have this data collected and analyzed to present the results
to you at the Ubuntu Developers' Summit in Paris in June, and I will
of course make the relevant results available on-line afterwards.

Feel free to send me any questions or comments that you might have
regarding this survey or my fieldwork in general.

Thank you very much for your help!

Andreas Lloyd
-
https://launchpad.net/people/lloydinho


[1]: At the moment of writing, there are 1270 Launchpad members who have signed the Code of Conduct, thus qualifying for the Ubuntero badge. But there is most certainly many other Ubuntu users and participants who haven't signed the Code of Conduct, or who simply don't use Launchpad.

Kvark
May 16th, 2006, 01:30 PM
Cool, research on the workings of a foss community. That sounds very interesting, and important.

But I didn't understand who you want to fill out that survery. Are you interested in people who started using Ubuntu less then a month ago and just signed up to the forum to ask for help? Or are you only interested in people who know the developers? Or is the bar somewhere in between?

az
May 16th, 2006, 02:46 PM
But I didn't understand who you want to fill out that survery. Are you interested in people who started using Ubuntu less then a month ago and just signed up to the forum to ask for help? Or are you only interested in people who know the developers? Or is the bar somewhere in between?

I think it is to find out who is part of the Ubuntu community and why. That would include everybody, even relative newcomers.

Maybe some people on the forums feel that they are not part of the Ubuntu community?

nalmeth
May 16th, 2006, 03:07 PM
In advancing to page three, I get:

This survey is currently closed.

Please contact the author of this survey for further assistance.

Engnome
May 16th, 2006, 04:45 PM
You should try and advertise for this survey on more places, It will be very biased if you only advertise for it one these forums.

matthew
May 16th, 2006, 04:46 PM
In advancing to page three, I get:

This survey is currently closed.

Please contact the author of this survey for further assistance.I had the same experience.

towsonu2003
May 16th, 2006, 05:51 PM
In advancing to page three, I get:

This survey is currently closed.

Please contact the author of this survey for further assistance.
works for me (finished)...

oscar
May 16th, 2006, 06:19 PM
I don't find the questions very clearly defined (I am only on the first page at the moment) but:

4. Country of Origin (nationality):
I was born in the UK and my nationality is British Citizen, what should I put?

5. Current home (city/country):
I live in Geneva / Switzerland, should I put "Geneva", "Switzerland" or "Geneva/Switzerland"?

I guess it doesn't matter too much but it bothered me enough to post here.

lloyd
May 16th, 2006, 06:21 PM
Sorry that some of you had difficulty accessing the survey. I had to make some minor changes based on early feedback from respondees. It's all to make for a smoother experience filling out the questionnaire..

As regards to the question on who should fill out the form - it is intentionally vague. The idea is that if people feel as part of the Ubuntu community - participating and contributing to make Ubuntu better - then they would probably also find it relevant to take the survey to help it in this easy manner.

Several have complained that the survey is too long - I'm afraid that is due to some technical limitations in the Survey Monkey software that doesn't allow for people to automatically skip sections that they've already pointed out is irrelevant to them. ](*,)

I hope that people can accept these limitations which would be apparent in almost any sort of quantitative survey, and have fun filling out the questionnaire all the same.

Thanks :)

lloyd
May 16th, 2006, 06:24 PM
Hi Oscar,

I'm sorry if you find the wording unclear. Yet it seems that you've interpreted both questions correctly.

For the first question all answers like "UK", "British" or "Great Britain" are fine. What matter is how people identify themselves.

For the second question, "Geneva/Switzerland" was the format I was looking for.

Cheers,

Andreas

matthew
May 16th, 2006, 07:29 PM
Sorry that some of you had difficulty accessing the survey. I had to make some minor changes based on early feedback from respondees. It's all to make for a smoother experience filling out the questionnaire..I tried it again and it worked fine.

nalmeth
May 16th, 2006, 07:30 PM
Cool, I'll fill it out today.

az
May 20th, 2006, 02:17 AM
How many responders so far? Or would posting that make some results invalid?

lloyd
May 21st, 2006, 10:35 AM
I shouldn't think having respondees knowing the current number of responses would invalidate the survey.

Currently there are around 200 valid responses. Not really enough for statistical validation purposes, but some trends do seem to be emerging (can't go to details yet, though).

But again: If you are an active member of the Ubuntu community, and you haven't answered the survey yet - please do! The more responses, the better the final result will be!

thanks,

Andreas

oscar
May 21st, 2006, 04:29 PM
In a way it is a pity you can't advertise this in the other forums, I'm pretty sure more people would see it there, but it would be off topic.

vertigo
May 21st, 2006, 08:52 PM
I've filled it in

Lord Illidan
May 21st, 2006, 09:17 PM
Me too.

xtacocorex
May 21st, 2006, 09:42 PM
Man that was a tricky survey...

That was a joke. I just completed it.

lloyd
July 4th, 2006, 02:22 PM
I have processed all of the results of the Ubuntu Census Survey that I have received. I have made the results available here (http://www.eskar.dk/andreas/output/Survey-intro.html).

You can read more about the background of the Survey and its part in my anthropological fieldwork on their separate specifications pages in the Ubuntu Wiki:

Ubuntu Census Survey (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuCensusSurvey)

Anthropological Fieldwork in the Ubuntu Community (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuFieldwork)

Again, any comments, ideas or other input is most appreciated.

Best regards,

Andreas

--
https://launchpad.net/people/lloydinho

RAV TUX
July 4th, 2006, 04:34 PM
I have processed all of the results of the Ubuntu Census Survey that I have received. I have made the results available here (http://www.eskar.dk/andreas/output/Survey-intro.html).

You can read more about the background of the Survey and its part in my anthropological fieldwork on their separate specifications pages in the Ubuntu Wiki:

Ubuntu Census Survey (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuCensusSurvey)

Anthropological Fieldwork in the Ubuntu Community (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuFieldwork)

Again, any comments, ideas or other input is most appreciated.

Best regards,

Andreas

--
https://launchpad.net/people/lloydinho
Thanks for compiling the demographic data, this is not only useful but very helpful.

ubuntu_demon
July 4th, 2006, 10:10 PM
I posted the links to this to digg and to my blog see :
http://ubuntudemon.wordpress.com/2006/07/04/results-of-the-ubuntu-census-survey

digg it :
http://digg.com/linux_unix/Results_of_the_Ubuntu_Census_Survey