I just wanted to comment about our philosophy regarding sample size, since this is an issue that comes up from time to time.

Given where Second Life is in its development (evolving very rapidly and starting from a very limited information base), we’ve been prioritizing sample quality and report timeliness and frequency over sample size (once we reach the threshold required to do the analysis desired for a particular project).

With regard to quality, only people who have verified accounts and have been in Second Life for at least a month are eligible to join our panel. This reduces the potential for people providing invalid and unreliable information. We also implement a variety of data checks each time we collect data to identify any panelists providing invalid or unreliable information so we can exclude that from our analysis. Furthermore, we are careful about maximum overall participation frequency and not questioning the same panel members about the same topics in too short a time frame to ensure data quality is not compromised either due to respondent fatigue or lack of independence.

With regard to timeliness and frequency, given the rate of evolution of Second Life, we believe it’s important not to let the period for data collection for any project extend for too long (since the phenomena itself could change), and also that we’ll be able to achieve a better understanding of what’s happening in virtual worlds by measuring what’s going on more often with smaller samples than less often with larger samples.

Having said all of that, we are very open to hearing from members of the business community about how we can best meet your need for information about what’s happening within Second Life and other virtual worlds.

Mary Ellen