Please Participate in Research on Hackers (5 minute survey)
southampton.ac.uk
southampton.ac.uk
Also, the questions are very poorly worded and are sometimes impossible to answer because it assumes I'm doing something that I'm not. For instance:
"Have you been financially compensated in any way for participating in this project?" WTF project are you talking about here? The hypothetical project that I might work on even though it doesn't help me or my friends?
As for the question regarding the compensation, the survey attempts to find out whether you (would) do it for money or just for the sake of programming.
"Would you participate in such a project for free or would you require some kind of reward."
The biggest problem is the perpetration of the myth that hacking is "penetrating security systems". A hack is a "quick but brilliant" solution to a problem. Hackers were people that could do this over and over again.
The test is comprised from several other researches and attempts to segment the participant into hacker as a programmer subculture, hacker as security researcher and hacker as a the one who breaks into system.
First, you don't want to say "comprised from." "Assembled from" might be an acceptable substitute.
Second, this hardly covers the many definitions for "hacker". What about "computer fanatic"? But in the final analysis, to prevent confusion, IMHO you should avoid the term "hacker" altogether. Choose a term that has fewer contradictory meanings. If you fail to clarify your intended audience, your work will end up having no meaning.