End of Data Collection! Thanks everybody for the help. I gathered more data than expected with 17 participants from kaw within two days. The other 13 or so participants I needed were gathered among people I know. Sometime in the next few days I'll assign the 17 participants a number and put them through a random number generator to get a winner for the seal I was going to give away.
Mon - fri each day Browser 2 hours Email 4x daily each about 5-10 minutes Weekends each day. Browser 30 minutes Email And 1x 10 minutes Excludes holidays. When techs ignored. Good luck with your assignment.
Mon-Fri, each day. Time spent actively browsing would be min.4 hrs, but browser is open for the entire day (8hrs). Emails, well, open all day. Time spent replying to them would be 1.5hrs. Weekends, nil to both.
Asking a pool of people who all play an online game enough to routinely check forums and see this is very definitely NOT random, nor will it be close to representative of the general population.
To get a simple random sample would be very time consuming and require complex methods. The sampling method I'm using is an example of non-probability sampling which should be avoided when doing actual research since it is voluntarily and haphazardly done through convenience which leaves a lot of room for bias, but it's good enough for this practice. When I write about it I will state the type of people I gathered data from. Most of the people who are doing the same class work as me are gathering data via social media such as Facebook or twitter. I've even seen two people partner up to entice people with doughnuts at our campus cafeteria for answers( not the best method). While accuracy is good this assignment is mostly testing my skills with creating and analyzing Scatter-plot graphs, regression graphs, R-squared values, explaining and interpreting interpolations, goodness of fit analysis and so on.
I'm guessing gathering data and writing about sources is part of the learning process. Also, the two questions I'm asking were created by myself. I wouldn't be able to properly analyze the relationship between the variables with made up data. I'm currently a student not a researcher, getting voluntary responses is basically as good as it gets at this point given time constraints and my limited resources. In the end it really boils down to; it's what my professor wants.
Browser: Approx 4-6 hours everyday, including weekends. Emails: open all day. Good luck in your statistics class What statistics program are you using?