Participants Needed for Undergraduate Dissertation

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Hi there,

My name is Jared Yorkston, and I am an undergraduate psychology student at the University of Buckingham. I am currently working on my dissertation project, titled “Using A Grounded Expertise Approach to Characterise Adult Fans of Lego" and I am looking for participants to take part in my survey.

Click the link below to find out more:

https://buckingham.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/lego-diss

Thank you for your time,

Jared Yorkston

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What is my research about?

I have devised a scale, that I hope will capture the different ways in which Adult Fans of Lego engage with Lego. I plan to then correlate this with other established questionnaires and assess how my Adult Fans of Lego scale holds up.

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What does previous research say?

Currently, there is little previous research that investigates the engagement styles of AFOL with Lego, and as such, I intend to begin to explore this area. Previous research into Lego has investigated areas such as serious play (Per Kristiansen & Rasmussen, 2014), or how Lego can be utilised in therapies (HSR Psychology, n.d.). Furthermore, the field of psychology has recently begun to explore creativity and expertise, as seen in recent publications (Neale, 2020) and academic blogs (CREATE psychology, n.d.).

References:

CREATE Ψ. (n.d.). CREATE Ψ. https://createpsy.com/

HSR Psychology. (n.d.). Lego therapy interventions - Specialist interventions - Interventions - Services - HSR Psychology - Clinical and educational psychology service for children and young people, based in Manchester. Retrieved February 24, 2022, from https://www.hsrpsychology.co.uk/services/intervention/specialist-interventions/lego-therapy/

Neale, D. (2020, May). A golden age of play for adults | The Psychologist. Thepsychologist.bps.org.uk. https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-33/may-2020/golden-age-play-adults

Per Kristiansen, & Rasmussen, R. (2014). Building a better business using the Lego serious play method. Wiley. 

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What does participation entail?

To meet the inclusion criteria, potential participants will have to be over the age of 18 and have engaged with Lego in the past year. As participants in this research, you will be informed of their rights at the very beginning. Once this has been done, you meet the established criteria and consent to take part, all you will have to do is answer a collection of multiple choice answers I have complied in an online survey, which should take no longer than 20 minutes to complete.

Brickchap

Well I never thought I'd see Lego as a dissertation topic but good on you! Ironically I'm an undergrad myself, so unfortunately I don't really have time for surveys but good luck!

Side note, not sure if this is relevant but here in Australia following the success of the TV show Lego Masters (which you have in the UK), Lego became quite popular and TFOLs and AFOLs (self included) received much more positive comments from non-Lego fans than in the past.

Mostly Australians hold a positive view of Lego as a toy, but a very negative view of any Lego fan above the age of say, 8 years old. I think also the fact we are a sporting, outdoors nation doesn't really align with such an indoor, intelligent, creative hobby.

The Australian government is known for its hate of the arts, and just about anything intellectual, which has sadly proliferated to the larger populace.

Therefore you may wish to explore increased (or decreased) societal non-Lego acceptance of AFOLs and the movement from the stereotype of an introverted middle aged white man in his basement playing with a kids toy to Lego being perceived as a creative activity for everyone, as well as a tool to assist in therapy. (conversely the increased public knowledge of Lego being used in therapy has led to the perception that any Lego fan within that roughly 8-21 age range must have ADHD or something)

CCC

You've already posted it before.

https://forum.brickset.com/discussion/38440/afol-dissertation-participants-needed

CCC

Brickchap said:

Well I never thought I'd see Lego as a dissertation topic but good on you!

It is nothing new, there are usually one or two per year posted on here, bricklink, eurobricks, etc asking for people to participate in an undergrad or masters survey about LEGO.

Brickchap

@CCC Sorry I hadn't noticed before. I thought it was a cool idea.

One of these days I might write a paper on Czechoslovakia and how it could have easily beat the Nazis in 1938 but was sold out by a group of Englishmen (including Chamberlain), along with pro-Nazi French generals. Anyway I thought of using the videogame War Thunder to compare German and Czechoslovak tanks as available in 1938 (as all the specifications, armour, type of shells available etc. in war thunder are as what was used on the real tanks), so have the numbers of tanks available and so forth (previous papers on this topic have looked at that including things like the weather at the time, in regards to whether the Luftwaffe could have been used effectively), and then the in game simulation to get a real life (as close as possible) idea of what battles might have been like. (since of course technology can look good on paper but may not actually perform well in battle, or conversely it might perform even better than any academic looking at lists of figures would expect).

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Hi all,

Thanks to everybody who took part in the survey! with the help of you all, I was able to surpass my goal of 100 completed surveys and reached a whopping 159 at the end of it all (when it closed on 20/04/2022). I have been very busy since then, doing data processing and analysis and writing up my dissertation as well as doing my university work for my other module. My dissertation write-up is due in on May 23rd and will be able to publish it to all of you who wish to read it by the end of June. -

Once again thank you for your time, it is much appreciated.

- Jared