Original Character Survey 2015

A silly little thing I was inspired to throw together while looking at all the possible answers from the fill-in-the-blank species question. And yackity sax because I felt like it.

Several people have suggested I turn certain questions into fill-in-the-blank text questions instead of multiple choice, but when I do that, people like to add clarification notes and go into a lot of detail. This isn’t a bad thing, it’s great that you guys know so much about your characters, but it makes dealing with the data afterwards difficult. There are also typos, different ways of phrasing the same concept (“human/fairy” vs “human/fairy hybrid”), and punctuation differences (my spreadsheet program counts “Human” and “Human.” as different categories) that cause all sorts of problems.

Hopefully now you guys get why I have to leave the questions limiting sometimes. In the print-out version I’m turning lots of questions into fill-in-the-blank instead of multiple choice, so if you want to fill that stuff out, you’ll be able to there.

Humans were the most common, as expected, followed by humanoid fantasy/mythical species. (I don’t know how trustworthy those percentages are.)

The fill-in-the-blank species question is a little harder to analyze, but I’ll try. The most common words I could find were:

Human: 1156 had “human” in their species. (This includes human crossbreeds.)

Elf: 108 had “elf” in their species. (Includes half-elves and other types of elves.)

Vampire: 47 had “vampire” in their species.

This is a graph of the average attractiveness rating of each group. In the survey, people were asked to rate their character’s intended attractiveness on a scale from 1 to 9, with 5 being average. They were also asked who the character’s appearance was based on, with the following options: yourself, someone you’ve seen in real life, a celebrity, a historical figure, another fictional character, and no one in particular. 

Characters based on the creator had the lowest average attractiveness at 5.62, while characters based on celebrities had the highest at 6.72. 

Character’s Perceptions of How Well-Liked They Are vs. How Well-Liked They Really Are

First results of this new survey! I’m so excited. This data came out to be pretty interesting. 

In the survey, people were asked a few questions about their character’s reputation. One question asked “How well-liked are they, generally?” The options to answer were:

Everyone loves them! They don't have a single enemy. (Labeled here as “universally liked”)

The majority of people like them but a small number dislike them. (Labeled here as “widely liked”)

There are more people who like them than people who dislike them.(Labeled here as “liked”)

There are about as many people who like them as people who dislike them. (Labeled here as “neutral”)

There are more people who dislike them than people who like them. (Labeled here as “disliked”)

The majority of people dislike them but a small number like them.(Labeled here as “widely disliked”)

Everyone hates their guts. No one likes them. (Labeled here as “universally disliked”)

The first graph shows the total numbers of how many characters were placed in each “reputation rating”. The most common was for characters to be liked, followed by neutral. The least common was for them to be universally disliked, followed by universally liked.

A second question on the survey asked, “How well-liked do they THINK they are?” The options to answer were:

They think everyone loves them, of course. How could anyone hate them? (Labeled here as “universally liked”)

They think most people like them, but there are bound to be some people out there who don't. (Labeled here as “widely liked”)

They think there are more people who like them than people who dislike them. (Labeled here as “liked”)

They think there are about as many people who like them as people who dislike them. (Labeled here as “neutral”)

They think there are more people who dislike them than people who like them. (Labeled here as “disliked”)

They think most people dislike them, but there must be some people out there who don't. (Labeled here as “widely disliked”)

They think everyone hates their guts, how could anyone stand them? (Labeled here as “universally disliked”)

The second graph shows the total numbers of how many characters were placed in each self-perceived reputation rating. The most common was for characters to think they were neutral, followed by disliked. The least common was for characters to think they were universally liked, followed by universally disliked. 

The next seven graphs show what percentages of each reputation rating fell into each self-perceived reputation rating; in other words, how well liked characters in each reputation group tended to think they were. For example, how many universally liked characters thought they were liked, disliked, etc.

The colors on the bar graphs represent how far off the character’s estimation of how well-liked they are is. Blue-green means they highly overestimated their likeableness, yellow-green means a slight overestimation, yellow is an accurate estimation, orange is a slight underestimation, and red is a significant underestimation. 

The most prominent trend is that in every single group except for universally disliked, characters tended to underestimate how well-liked they are by one “point”. Universally liked characters though they were just widely liked, disliked characters thought they were widely disliked, and so on. 

The most likely group to have an accurate perception of how well-liked they are is the universally disliked group, while the least likely to be accurate is the liked group. 

I’ve only added one extra question to the survey since opening it up for people (a species question on the humanoid page), but that was when I only had about a hundred responses, so hopefully it won’t mess things up too much. After that, nothing about the survey has changed.

Current response count: 3003 (HOLY CRAP WE DID IT. Still going to see how much we can get by Christmas, though.)

Current progress on print-out version of survey: 10 pages complete, just finished the section on family. I added a couple more questions because some pages were feeling empty.

However, although my goal was 5000 this year, I’m not going to aim for that again. Instead, I’ll settle with whatever I have by Christmas day. (Crossing my fingers and hoping for 3000!) After that I can finally start analyzing this data. 

I may not look like I’m doing much, but I’ve gotten to work on the printable version of the questionnaire. I’m hoping to have it done by the end of winter break. I’m doing it all fancy in InDesign to keep my page layout skills sharp. Ish. I’m not that good at page layout but I'm trying my best.

The fact that I’m not collecting data means that the print version is going to have a lot less multiple choice questions and a lot more fill in the blanks. Hopefully this is helpful.