Qualtrics!! :D

[Fredjikrang]

Well, I wasn't able to take your survey mic0, but I did take the survey of Whistler's friend. But I did find it to be a bit unspecific. Most of the questions seemed to be directed to learning motivated reading, without specifying that it was talking about that kind of reading. Could cause some skewing if someone (like me) goes in thinking about recreational reading, which is what I have been doing recently.

[Tao]

Aye, I too, struggled with that questionnaire, even some of the very first questions tripped me up. Do you read in other languages? Yes. How much official training have you had in the languages you are reading in? Uhhhh? cumulative? average per language? My first inclination was none, as my more active reading is reading Dante, and I've never even looked at an Italian course. Hebrew is more common, but my readings are more spotty and/or assignment based. Eh, such are the troubles with non-interactive surveys.

[Dead Cat]

I thought it was the easiest survey ever. Of course, that's because I don't know any other languages and it ended after the second question, but still.

[mic0]

So, results. It seems that people can accurately identify author gender from a tweet 63% of the time. That's pretty good, obviously there is something going on more than just guessing. The majority of tweets were identified with between 50-85% accuracy, with only a few that had >90% accuracy or <50% accuracy. So, some tweets that had very obvious gender-related features (emoticons, heart symbol, very violent imagery, etc.) were easy for people to guess. However, the ones that people got completely wrong were usually ones where the topic was stereotypically male/female but the author was the opposite of what people thought.

It seems people can identify gender a lot of the time, and that there are certain things that seem to point towards one gender over the other (men really do seem to swear more than women, even online, and women do seem to have more description or use emoticons) then it is easy. But, if they are not obvious, or are counter-intuitive, then it is hard. My results were pretty straight forward really. The biggest questions that this study raised for me are (1) is this different among people who use online forums, and (2) why would women use emoticons more (are they more concerned with tone?).

So, there you have it. Just thought you all might like an update.

[C is for]

Yeah I actually remember being very hesitant to mark some stereotypes as one gender or another. What's the deal with emoticons? Should we start another study?

[mic0]

Yes, we should start another study! My husband, for example, uses emoticons quite a lot (maybe not as much as me, but a lot). I wonder if it is because he is a nerd, because he is online a lot, because of his personality, or what... I think this would be interesting to check out.

[Katya]

why would women use emoticons more (are they more concerned with tone?).

That would be my guess.

[Katya]

Did you look at whether women use exclamation points more? My (non-controlled) observation is that they do, but I'd be curious to see if it's actually true.

[mic0]

I didn't, but a study I referenced (available here: http://www.mitre.org/work/tech_papers/2 ... 1_0170.pdf) found that exclamation points were a lot more likely to be used by women than men. Also, a guy in my class did his paper on how men and women view text messages. Some of the texts had no punctuation, some had a period, and some had one or more exclamation points. The women almost always felt that the ones with exclamation points were more positive.

[Katya]

I didn't, but a study I referenced (available here: http://www.mitre.org/work/tech_papers/2 ... 1_0170.pdf) found that exclamation points were a lot more likely to be used by women than men. Also, a guy in my class did his paper on how men and women view text messages. Some of the texts had no punctuation, some had a period, and some had one or more exclamation points. The women almost always felt that the ones with exclamation points were more positive.

I have definitely felt a degree of exclamation point inflation in my own writing. I'm not happy about it, but, like you say, exclamation points are seen as more positive (by other women, at least).

[mic0]

Without the exclamation point you just don't convey the same tone. (or) Without the exclamation point you just don't convey the same tone!

[Dragon Lady]

I'm entertained that this whole discussion about exclamation points only included one. Even though the whole conversation has been between two women.

[mic0]

Haha, good point DL! Looks like the only exclamation points in this whole thread are from me and Marduk. I wonder what that means...

(If we're going to be serious, though, people's posts on Twitter are generally not as thought out as our posts here. So, while women use a lot of exclamation points in their personal messages, that doesn't really mean they use them in less spontaneous conversation... did that make sense? )

[Katya]

(If we're going to be serious, though, people's posts on Twitter are generally not as thought out as our posts here. So, while women use a lot of exclamation points in their personal messages, that doesn't really mean they use them in less spontaneous conversation... did that make sense? )

I'd also add that it's a scientific / technical conversation, which has its own conversational norms.

[Marduk]

In my defense, I was pretending to be effeminate during said post.

....yeah, pretending. That's it.

[Katya]

In my defense, I was pretending to be effeminate during said post.

....yeah, pretending. That's it.

Or maybe it's your passionate Latin side. (Ending that sentence with a period is a clear sign of my dour Scandinavian roots.)

[Emiliana]

(men really do seem to swear more than women, even online)

Did you find a pattern in *which* swear words the genders are likely to use? For instance, I think I marked several tweets as being written by women based on their use of the word "bitch," because it seems like that's something women are more likely to call each other than to be called by men. But I could be wrong.

[mic0]

Well, the interesting thing with "bitch" is that in the two randomly chosen tweets I had in there one was written by a man and the other by a woman. The people who guessed correctly on those said that the tone was different. So, it seems like men and women probably use that swear in different contexts. In some things that I have read in the past, it seems like women do (or used to) use "bitch" more with each other, but that when men use it it is more charged or something. Not sure, I'd have to read up more on that.