[Tango-L] Research project: Correlation between cultural identity and tango

[Tango Research]

Some of you have expressed concerns about the tango survey
(relationship between one’s cultural identity and the values they see
in tango).

This survey derived from questions which arose from my experience with
tango dancers in various countries, on different continents. Although
this is a study born out of my personal interest, as an experienced
researcher (I have a MA and a PhD, and one of my research interest
lies in the field of psycholinguistics), I have gone through all the
expected protocols for this study, starting with literature review. I
have decided on the methodology (methods of investigation, procedure,
and analyses) after due consideration.

The survey is an initial, exploratory study to determine whether the
results are sufficiently promising to pursue a more intensive study.
If the results of the survey are promising (I am happy to share the
results with anyone who wishes to see them), I may consider doing this
study as a university project, in which case I have to obtain an
official ethics clearance, for example, to conduct email interviews
(as mentioned at the end of the survey).

I chose to be anonymous and used non-personal email to communicate,
mainly because my personal email would reveal my occupation and
institution, leading people to presume that this survey was one of the
university research projects, which it is not.

For reasons stated above, it would be inappropriate to host the survey
on the servers at work. Public servers did not provide the necessary
database facilities, so the bulk of the survey code is being hosted by
a friend. Traffic diversion is not an aim.

One participant (well, in the end, non-participant) expressed security
concerns. The only aspect of the survey mechanism that may have
triggered the reported security alert is that the survey mechanism
uses a "cookie" to control the survey session. This is the intended
purpose of cookies, which are no sort of security threat to anyone.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_cookie for a discussion of
cookies, from which I quote:

----------
    “Being simple pieces of text, cookies are not executable. They are
neither spyware    or viruses, although cookies from certain sites are
detected by many anti-spyware products because they can allow users to
be tracked when they visit various sites.

Most modern browsers allow users to decide whether to accept cookies,
and the time frame to keep them, but rejecting cookies makes some
websites unusable. For example, shopping carts or login systems
implemented using cookies do not work if cookies are disabled.”

---------
Another participant remarked  "too many words the same". The words
have been carefully chosen from an extensive literature review. Words
that appear to be synonyms to one person may be significantly
different to another. The survey is also in three languages, and
synonyms in one language may not be so in another.

The survey includes 100 words (which were selected from an initial
pool of 178 words), as clearly stated at the beginning of the word
test.

--------
Please position the cursor and click once to indicate how much you think
this word is important to your tango. Please make a judgement based on your
intuition (without giving it a deep thought). You will see 100 words
altogether, but the whole test should be completed within 10 min if
you respond to each word within 6 seconds.

-------

In order to further emphasise this, I have modified the text on the
word-page to not only indicate that you are up to word-N but
reiterating that it is "out of 100". For those who felt that it got
boring, if this was due to the proximity of particular words, note
that they are delivered in an order randomised for each participant.

The optional inclusion of email address provides a means of direct
delivery of survey results on completion of the research. The survey
is not confined to members of tango-L, and hence publication of the
results on tango-L is not sufficient. Some survey participants do not
belong to this, or any such group, but still wish to be advised of
results. I underline that email address is optional. Note also the
assurance that addresses will not be divulged.

I thank those tango-L listeros who have participated, and would be
grateful if you would ask others to participate - particularly those
of Japanese and Latin background, since they are currently
under-represented.

Questions and constructive suggestions are always welcome. However, as
I cannot attend to this project as much as I would like to (I am doing
this outside of my work), my responses may be delayed.

Thank you.
TR