An online survey about the Oregon Trail computer game. The survey was completed in Fall of 2006, and was the first online survey to use the Facebook API. No further surveys are being conducted at this time.
March 26, 2008 - After giving it some close thought, I've made the survey results available online. At this time I have no plans to conduct another Oregon Trail Survey.
June 24, 2007 - I've recently been contacted by several researchers interested in the results from my survey. Because I continue to build upon this research and use the data, I've chosen to not make this information available directly on my site. If you're interested in learning more, please contact me and I'll give you access to a password protected directory containing a data dump. I hope to conduct another Oregon Trail survey in the future, building off the success of the first one and bridging methodological gaps. The survey ran for 8 days, and received 480 responses from 44 different states and 4 countries. It also became the most popular web-based use of the Facebook API and gained recognition on the front page of their developer website. Thanks again to all who took the survey, and those to continue to engage in dialogue about the game, including my research.
November 17th, 2006 - I have completed my online survey on the Oregon Trail computer game. The wide-use of the survey has made it the second most popular product which uses the Facebook API for a brief period, second only to Facebook's own Firefox toolbar. If you're interested more in my research, please feel free to e-mail me (davelester@gmail.com) or leave a comment on my blog. This research will be used to complete my undergraduate thesis.