Research into home winemaking - TIME TO TAKE THE SURVEY

[sour_grapes]

I am pretty sure that the OP knows how to conduct a valid research study. https://researchers.adelaide.edu.au/profile/william.skinner

 

[joeswine]

Not for me.

 

[Jan]

Will participate.

 

[jgmann67]

I’m in.

 

[JustJoe]

As an "average" hobbyist, I would be happy to participate

 

[Dkrmwiz]

This sounds fun, I'll help. Count me in too, please.

 

[ThunderFred]

I'm happy to participate.

 

[crcarey]

Count me in.

 

[BernardSmith]

1d10t , There should be no fundamental problem for anyone engaged in research to use online forums to gather data about how members of those forums (note my wording) interact with other members and how they may talk about how they interact with others who may be members of other forums or who are not members of any forum.That said, there MAY be ethical issues if some people on a public forum object. But that would be something for a university IRB (institutional review board) to consider (IRB's determine the ethical issues surrounding research on live human subjects and either give a green light for the project or call a halt if they believe that the ethical issues have not been resolved).

If the researcher states that this and this was the sample I studied and this and this is what I have learned from this sample then there is no need for that researcher to look for different or other samples. One of the great social scientists of the 20th Century, Harvey Sacks, a man who single-handedly created a whole new branch of research now called conversational analysis, spent years examining what people said when they called a suicide hotline.
If the researcher is making a claim about What ANYONE or EVERYONE does then this kind of research may not be sufficient but "grounded theory", for example, simply demands that the researcher "codes" the raw data as themes that emerge FROM the data and continues to organize the data into those emergent themes in ways that saturate the themes with data, until there are no data left outside of any theme and and all the data that is assigned to a theme covers that theme completely. (Surveys begin (and largely end) with ideas that are not emergent from the data themselves but come from external sources (what someone thinks they know or what someone wants to find out and so asks, whether or not those questions are anything that the respondents have ever thought about as they go about their daily lives) but as an anthropologist, REDRUM would be very aware of all this.

 

[Rocky]

I am pretty sure that the OP knows how to conduct a valid research study. https://researchers.adelaide.edu.au/profile/william.skinner

I am in complete agreement with Paul. I think we can safely give Bill the benefit of the doubt regarding his methodology for his research. PhD's don't come in Cracker Jack boxes and doctoral theses require extensive data gathering, sifting and interpretation. Yes, he could glean some useful information from going through the 700,000+ posts on this forum but he would probably be retired before he completed the work.

 

[1d10t]

No aspersions on the OP but anyone keeping tabs on the amount of bogus research being pumped out would be skeptical. Even on important studies no one wants to do the work of validating someone else's work. They prefer to do their own. Publish or perish has led to a ton of truly crap work flooding the publications. Credentials are no ticket to exemption. That's why I asked the question. All I have to go by is what was in the original post. I'm not making up stuff in my mind to fill the gaps and take that leap of faith. You are free to do as you wish.

 

[Callmike]

I would like to participate in the survey! Thanks for all of your hard work.

 

[montanarick]

Hi everyone,

I am an anthropologist based at the University of Adelaide, Australia, who studies wine production and consumption. My research to date has mostly been to do with commercial wine, but as a home winemaker myself (and a member of this forum for a few years) I want to extend research into home and amateur winemaking, because this is an area that is often ignored! In particular, I am interested in the way knowledge, techniques, cultures and practices of winemaking are communicated and shared.

Please let me know by replying here (or by private message) if you are likely to be interested in participating in this research and answering some questions about your own winemaking. I want to hear from a range of winemakers from different places, with different perspectives and different levels of experience and expertise, from first-timers to serious hobbyists with their own vineyards.

The data collection will take the form of online surveying, and this may be followed up by more detailed questions via private message or email. All your responses will be anonymous: I will not collect or divulge any information that might identify you personally.

Thanks in advance!

Bill Skinner – william.skinner*at*adelaide.edu.au

I'd be happy to give a go at it!

 

[Rice_Guy]

I am willing to do the survey.
As an industry foods person I look at wine as a low tech preservative system which worked 4000 years ago. The industry job is in good part figuring out the rules which make the system work and finding sensors and writing control logic to replace “skilled in the art”.

 

[joeswine]

Nothing can replace a wine makers creativity, there are things in life that takes human creativity and the desire to make something your own.
If your referring to the MFG. Steps.There needed to control the.process for the novice winemakers. Either way eventually the novice becomes advanced if they stay the course and learn to think outside the box.

 

[joeswine]

Nothing can replace a wine makers creativity, there are things in life that takes human creativity and the desire to make something your own.

 

[BernardSmith]

No aspersions on the OP but anyone keeping tabs on the amount of bogus research being pumped out would be skeptical. Even on important studies no one wants to do the work of validating someone else's work. They prefer to do their own. Publish or perish has led to a ton of truly crap work flooding the publications. Credentials are no ticket to exemption. That's why I asked the question. All I have to go by is what was in the original post. I'm not making up stuff in my mind to fill the gaps and take that leap of faith. You are free to do as you wish.

Very true that a lot of poor research gets published in part because of the need to publish for tenure and the tiny number of openings there are for tenure (it is as someone said recently like being the winner in a state lottery given the number seeking a position vs the number universities and colleges hire as full time faculty) But that said, "poor or research whose findings cannot be replicated by others is generally (in my opinion) done by psychologists and while their work makes enormous claims about how people behave much like physicists and chemists make claims about how matter behaves, people are rather different. Our behavior - our actions - are grounded in meaning and understanding (and an understanding of actions is also grounded in meaning) and when you introduce meaning and understanding then any claims about explanations that are larger than the groups (or individuals) you are observing is pretty close to nonsense, but providing "the good sense" for the actions or understandings of some social actors IS a big deal. But that "good sense" has very little to do with "grand theory"

 

[joeswine]

I'm so confused

 

[REDRUM]

Hi all, thanks for all the responses -glad to see there's a bit of interest out there. To clarify (hopefully) a few things: I'm a casually-employed academic. This is not a funded research project, but something I'm doing out of self-interest, and to publish a paper or two down the track. I will be sourcing survey participants not just from this forum but from others (including Facebook groups etc), as well as through email lists of winemakers clubs here in Australia. Survey data will be supplementary to the stuff that can be gathered from public posts. Ultimately I'm more interested in qualitative data (peoples' stories & experiences) than quantitative.
I am checking with my Uni to see if this research needs to go through formal ethics approval processes, but obviously their administrative processes are a bit up in the air at the moment given the COVID-19 situation. Take care out there in these trying times!

 

[winemaker81]

Email sent. I'm willing to participate.