Bitcoin User Study

[cflick]

Hi all, I'm a researcher at Middlesex University (UK) in technology ethics. I've been involved in bitcoin for a while (but only ever been a lurker on these forums), and am finding it really interesting to follow the technical and social developments of it. At any rate, I'm conducting a survey of bitcoin users to be used as part of a study into "design for privacy" which will be presented at an upcoming workshop on "privacy for life".

If you'd like to contribute your opinions about bitcoin use and ethics, please follow the link below to my survey:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?hl=en_US&formkey=dHdIS2paaUllM1pKTGdnNm5UeEswQ1E6MQ

There's more information about my research at the link.

Thanks very much in advance!

ETA: I'll be very happy to answer any questions about my research or the survey in this topic :-)

Edit #2: If you're concerned about Google or live somewhere where Google docs is blocked, please use this version instead: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/X3PBSKV - please note that it's an inferior version of the survey due to question restrictions but the main questions are there :-)

[antares]

hey, I just did your survey, maybe you should focus a bit more on yes/no questions, all those text entry fields make it harder for you to analyze the results later, and they discourage willing participants.
Also, if you're going to ask whether people use Bitcoins for illegal purposes, you should move the survey from google - they are bound to the Patriot Act.
Finally, it might be good to ask people about the country they are from

[cflick]

Hi! Thanks for your suggestions. Sadly I'm pretty limited with the way google presents the forms And the "why"s are actually the focus of the research - it's all well and good knowing some statistics but I'm interested in people's longer opinions!

The Patriot Act is one reason I'm not asking where people come from, and why I'm not specific in what constitutes "illegal purposes" I don't want anyone to incriminate themselves! I'll see what I can do about moving it from google - issue is that most survey sites are probably similarly problematic, law-wise.

At any rate, I'm more interested in a general opinion response from the bitcoin community rather than a country-by-country breakdown of results. Since bitcoin is an emerging global technology with emerging impact on worldwide systems, I felt that identification of country of origin might be a bit arbitrary.

Thanks to everyone who's filled it out so far - there have been some really interesting responses!

[helloworld]

Done.

You have "Privacy of transactions", why not "Privacy of net wealth"?

[Gabi]

Hi! Thanks for your suggestions. Sadly I'm pretty limited with the way google presents the forms And the "why"s are actually the focus of the research - it's all well and good knowing some statistics but I'm interested in people's longer opinions!

The Patriot Act is one reason I'm not asking where people come from, and why I'm not specific in what constitutes "illegal purposes" I don't want anyone to incriminate themselves! I'll see what I can do about moving it from google - issue is that most survey sites are probably similarly problematic, law-wise.

At any rate, I'm more interested in a general opinion response from the bitcoin community rather than a country-by-country breakdown of results. Since bitcoin is an emerging global technology with emerging impact on worldwide systems, I felt that identification of country of origin might be a bit arbitrary.

Thanks to everyone who's filled it out so far - there have been some really interesting responses!

Google can see the IP of people who did the survey and thus the police is able to find them...

[cflick]

Thanks!

helloworld: I didn't think of that! Hopefully you added it to "Other", but I'll make a definite note of it.

Gabi: This is true, which is also why I was trying to not be specific on the nature of the illegal activity as well. Perhaps I should re-word it to "potentially legally problematic activities" or something?

[dancupid]

I'm in china and google docs seems to be blocked here. Do you have another link?

[cflick]

Hi dancupid, I made an alternate version on Surveymonkey - hopefully that's not blocked too! Sadly with the question restriction I had to merge the last three questions together into one, but apart from that it's all pretty much the same.

Thanks!

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/X3PBSKV

[dancupid]

Hi dancupid, I made an alternate version on Surveymonkey - hopefully that's not blocked too! Sadly with the question restriction I had to merge the last three questions together into one, but apart from that it's all pretty much the same.

Thanks!

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/X3PBSKV

I can access this ok - I'll have a look

[helloworld]

helloworld: I didn't think of that! Hopefully you added it to "Other", but I'll make a definite note of it.

Uh no, because it doesn't apply to me, but just something I thought was an obvious use anyway.

[plogank]

I'm in china and google docs seems to be blocked here. Do you have another link?

The Tor Project might be of use to you.  It can be found here: https://www.torproject.org/

[blacbe]

if you're looking to gather data on opinions of bitcoin you'll get nothing but sample bias here. i suggest you survey a random demographic about the things the come along with bitcoin (private transactions and all that entails) without mentioning bitcoin in the survey.

[cflick]

Thanks everyone for filling out my survey! I now have over 130 responses which is more than enough to do some preliminary analysis I'm going to leave the survey up until Sunday (UK time) and then do a final analysis. I'll be sure to post the results here and email them to the people who left their email addresses.

blacbe - it's okay, I'm not looking for opinions on bitcoin so much as to a) elicit some of the potential social and ethical impacts of bitcoin, b) see how people are using bitcoin (though with some caveats, as discussed above), and c) find out what bitcoin users think about the technology they're using. Sadly the general public mostly has no idea what bitcoin is, so at the moment I'm restricting it to bitcoin users.

[cflick]

Thanks again everyone! I've closed the survey with 135ish responses (heaps!). Will post results when I've analysed them

[Nicolai Larsen]

Awesome! Can't wait ^^