Here are some other findings from ccMixter survey. Similar to the previous post, all these findings are based on answers we got from 35 respondents, so this may not represent the average user of the site. To help us improve this sample by adding your perspective to it, check out the links at the bottom of this post.

All the mean values reported below are out of 5. SD stands for Standard Deviation, a measure for how much individual responses deviate from the average. If you feel these findings are interesting, please share your thoughts here. Thanks! :)

One interesting question we ask in the survey is about factors that are important to ccMixter members in considering a work to remix. The important factors identified by our respondents include: How much I like the producer’s past work (Mean = 3.06); How much I like this work (Mean = 4.52); remixability of this work: how readily it lends itself to remix (Mean = 3.84); the existence of a contest for the submission of remixes of this work (Mean = 2.61); and the existence of prior remixes of this work by other members (Mean = 2.35). We expected the personal appeal of a work to be an important factor, but it’s interesting to note how central ‘remixabillity’ is as well, while one’s track record also play a role.

The survey also asked respondents how confident they feel about themselves and also the whole ccMixter community in terms of effectively accomplishing set goals. We use self-efficacy and collective efficacy to describe these. From the dataset, the mean value for self-efficacy is 3.76 (SD = 0.82), and the mean value for collective efficacy is 3.81 (SD = 0.92). Self-efficacy means that our respondents are confident to contribute to the community by submitting my works (Mean = 4.22), make use of available musical resources in the community for my personal works (Mean = 4.30), and they are confident about themselves in terms of understanding musical terms and ideas in the community (Mean = 4.22). Moreover, they feel like ccMixter, as a community, is able to create excellent music that all members are proud of (Mean = 4.29), and it will attract more and more members (Mean = 3.84). They also feel that the ccMixter community can cooperate in the face of difficulties to improve the quality of our musical works (Mean = 3.87), they are confident that they can be united in the community vision they present to outsiders (Mean = 3.81), they can commit themselves to common community goals despite their differences (Mean = 3.90).

A big thanks again to all ccMixters who have helped us with the survey so far. As the data collection and analysis is still ongoing, if you are new readers of my posting, do check the survey link and share your thoughts about open sharing and free culture. Here is the link, http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ccMixter_survey Also, for those ccMixters who filled out an older version of the survey but didn’t fill out the newer one yet, please check this link with the version that contains only the new questions: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ccMixter-NewQnsOnly

Thanks Rong for posting these summaries.I hope some members will find them interesting. In retrospect one might say that some of it was to be expected, but I think that upon deeper reflection we may find out that the results paint a clearer picture of the community than one would perhaps have otherwise. I find the result on remixability to be interesting for example, because it is really high, second only to the work’s appeal. I want to add here also my personal thanks to all who participated. As Rong indicated, the total number of responses we collected is small, but it helps us and we will combine it with responses from other communities to get a more complete picture of online creative communities that use shared resources.

What Rong presents here is just the simplest summary. A lot more can be gleaned from this information, so once again thanks to all. If anyone has additional questions/comments/anything really, do contact me or Rong.