Conferences

Second Life®, a 3D virtual world with over 15 million online residents, was created in 2003. At any one time, an average of over 50,000 residents are online, employing an avatar (a digital representations of self), that allow users to explore the virtual world, socialize with each other, learn, and transact business. Second Life® is a global phenomenon (approximately 60 percent of residents live outside the United States).

RTI International operates a prototype virtual research facility in Second Life®. RTI’s virtual research facility was built to investigate and evaluate the potential for collecting high quality survey data in virtual worlds; not coincidentally, our facility is used to communicate with, and train, a globally-dispersed field staff. The virtual building features open meeting space and four private interview rooms. Two of the private rooms are large enough to seat 4–15 avatars for a focus group. The other two private rooms are designed for one-on-one interviews. All rooms allow additional space for observers.

Our first experiments with these virtual interviewing capabilities and modes, including both survey kiosks and avatar-to-avatar interviews, will be discussed. At present, we are interested in discovering which modes work best in-world, whether or not, and what kind of, incentives work to gain the cooperation of inworld avatars, and whether or not we can get avatars to answer survey questions as their real-life human counterpart, as divorced from their inworld avatar. Our first interviews are being conducted during January – March 2009, and we’ll be able to present preliminary findings in Warsaw. Finally, we conclude with a discussion of next steps and plans for further research in-world.