Wroclaw Fieldwork

Last week we were in Wroclaw, Poland for another round of Imitation Game fieldwork. This time the topic was religion and we tried to do the full ‘symmetrical’ version in which equal numbers of Catholics try to pass as Secular and Secular students try to pass as Catholics. This meant recruiting over350 participants so well done (and a big thank you) to Jakub, Aga and Kasha who did a fantastic job recruiting and organising so many people.

The results are not quite in yet – the final step in the data collection process should be completed this week – but we hope to have some preliminary results to report in the next couple of months.

Uppsala fieldwork for IMGAME project

Last week the IMGAME project was in Uppsala. After test runs in Maastricht and Pisa we have now started the first large scale trials of the Imitation Game method.

For Uppsala, we chose to research sexuality and, in particular, the ability of straight men to pass as gay. We managed to run nearly 30 Imitation Games in one day, half of which had gay men in the judge role. We also collected another 80 pretender answers over the next two days

We are now combining these with the original questions and non-pretender answers before sending the completed transcripts to new judges. If successful we will have found a way of significantly boosting the sample size without increasing the time or cost of data collection.

More on whether or not this works – and what the results were – when all the data are in!

In the meantime, as none of this would have been possible without the help of Annelie Drakman, who made all the local arrangements and recruited the participants, we must say a special ‘thank you’ to her.