Anyone else get an email like this?

[LigTasm]

I just got this a few minutes ago, found it interesting that she supposedly didn't expect hardware enthusiasts to be folding.

Dear Folding@home participant,

I am a doctoral student at The Open University in the United Kingdom and I’m exploring why (and how) people take part in online citizen science projects like Folding@home.

Last spring you took part in a survey that I put together to collect data on the motivations and attitudes of F@H participants (follow this link for a summary of the main findings: http://sdrv.ms/1euaoWf).
You also very kindly provided your email address should there be any follow-up research.

After looking at the results of the questionnaire, a number of interesting things came to light, particularly relating to the involvement of small sub-groups and communities within the project. I am particularly interested in hardware enthusiasts and overclockers, as this group of participants appears to make a substantial contribution to the project. I would very much like to follow up the survey with some further questions (9 in total) to learn a bit more about this group. Not much has been written about this community, and the small number of studies that have looked at distributed computing do not really explore the contribution of overclockers and computer enthusiasts to these projects.

If you consider yourself to be a member of this community of participants, and are willing to take part, I can email you the list of questions and you can email your answers back to me. It will probably take you about 20 minutes.

All of the information I receive from you will be stored on a secure server at the Open University. It will not be passed on to any third party, and I will not link any interview data to personal email addresses or names. If you change your mind about participating at any point in the future, please let me know and I will delete any feedback / information you have provided. I may use quotes from the interviews in my thesis - but these will never be linked to usernames or actual names.

Please let me know if you would like to take part, and again, many thanks for completing the initial questionnaire. Your feedback has been of tremendous interest and is very much appreciated!

Best wishes,

Vickie Curtis

 

[Gilthanis]

How did you get the impression that "she supposedly didn't expect hardware enthusiasts to be folding" ? I read that as saying that they make up a large amount of the contribution and that interests her...

particularly relating to the involvement of small sub-groups and communities within the project. I am particularly interested in hardware enthusiasts and overclockers, as this group of participants appears to make a substantial contribution to the project.

 

[carlbme]

Nope, didn't get the email. Of course I wasn't active at that time when that questionnaire was put out.
Thanks for the link though, it was an interesting read and I did find myself grouped the in majority (college, advanced computer user, work in IT).

 

[rhavern]

Yes, I did. I participated in her first survey. She is legitimate.