Lock, currently a graduate student at Yuan Ze University in Taiwan, is working on his thesis. The topic is enticing--[Chinese] bloggers and their using behavior [Chinese was added by me since the questionnaire is written in Chinese]. It is great to see more and more blog studies are emerging in Chinese context. As far as I know, this is the very first study on blogging behavior in Chinese blogosphere. Just can't wait to read it!

If you can read Chinese and gladly to help the research, please check out Lock's blog to know more details. Don't forget to spread the word!

A few comments on the project.

Jay asked if bloggers from mainland China can take the survey. Lock replied to this but I don't get it really [Shame on me! It's written in Chinese!]. Seems like he doen't want [or expect?] responces from mainland China. I can totally understand Lock wants to aim at bloggers in Taiwan specifically but why not expand the population to the whole Chinese blogosphere? I don't see the regional differences play a BIG role in determining specific blogging behavior, at least in this case. Participation of mainland bloggers won't CONTAMINATE the data and it will help us to know all Chinese bloggers better instead. One big advantage of the study is the inherent language filter. Why not make full use of this? I think it's pretty cool.

Another commentator expressed his/her hesitation with the applicability of the uses-and-gratifications approach in blog studies. Actually there have been a few studies in U.S. employing this perspective to know "why people blog." I myself is doing research on blogs with this approach as well. I think the U&G can well fit into the usage of blogs in that it emphasizes the concept of "active audience". I don't think it is wise to be masked by literal meaning of the word "audience". In my opinion, the notion of "audience" can be interchangable with "media users". In this sense, it doens't matter those who use the medium are information consumers or message producers.

Lastly, I noticed that answer for each question is required to move on. So the respondent cannot skip those s/he doesn't want to answer or s/he has to quit it. It's an advantage of online survey and it can avoid missing data effectively. But it's not that ethical to force respondents to answer every question. I don't know if Lock needs to obtain approval for the study on human subjects from Institutional Review Board(IRB). IRB reviews plan of reseach and evaluates the potential risks for research subjects. The process is required for any study on human in the U.S. so that rights of respondents can be protected as much as possible. Anyway, in my case, I didn't see any question in the survey that would make me uncomfortable. :) But I did run into similar problems as y.hsiaoyin had encountered. I had to choose one answer to go on the survey and didnt' have options to say "I don't know" or "Not available". Usually people can skip these questions so the missing data can suggest something useful. But not in this one. :(

Two suggestions:

1. Stating the sampling criteria to avoid unwanted data, not completely, but this does help to filter those are not wanted.

2. Add answers like "I dont know" or "NA" to avoid distorted data. I know it's hard to change the questionnaire in the midway, but Lock may keep this in mind when defensing his thesis.

Good luck with the thesis!

很高兴看到中文世界的blog研究慢慢开展起来。在这方面，台湾的学术界走在了前面，希望大陆的传播学者多多加油！！！