Taking the Research to the Community

Hello all,

Whether or not you have been following my progress on my Genius Project for Sage Creek High School, I think it pertinent to give you all an update regarding my progress over the last two weeks.

Regrettably, I have not been able to devote as much free time as possible to the Genius Project, given a number of activities that demanded much of my attention, but I am happy to be able to say that in addition to conducting research, I am beginning to conduct studies of my own.

If you recall, my Genius Project concerns reducing anxiety in anxiety-prone individuals, and my project heavily emphasizes the ability of video games to reduce such anxiety. With this thought in mind, I decided to begin surveying the students at Sage Creek High School to determine two important pieces of information: 1) If they play video games or not, and 2) if they play video games, what their favorite genre for relaxation is.

Many of the students interviewed expressed their preference of Action games, such as the relatively-recently released shooter game Halo 5: Guardians, for relaxation. Photo Credit: Xbox Canada

In order to conduct my survey, I decided to create a Google Form that asks takers what their favorite genre of video game for relaxation purposes is. After conducting prerequisite research to determine the major genres of video games, I was able to supply my Google Form (which only asks one question) with the following genres of video games as answers: Action, Action-adventure, Adventure, Role-playing (my personal favorite), Simulation, Strategy, Sports, Massively Multiplayer Online, and Idle Gaming.

At present, I have sent the survey to six hundred of the students at Sage Creek High School, out of which one hundred and twenty-two have responded. Analyzing the current results, the Action genre is the most popular with 29.5% of all voters (36 votes) selecting this as their preferred relaxation genre. Furthermore, 18% of voters (22 votes) selected Adventure, 16.4% (20 votes) selected Sports,  and 12.3% (15 votes) selected Role-playing. As time continues and I send this survey out to more of my fellow students, I am looking forward to determining whether the current trend is maintained, or a new genre will surpass Action as the most popular choice for relaxation.

I apologize for the shortness of this blog post, as compared to my first two entries; however, I have no other news to report related to my Genius Project. I can say, however, that I am definitely looking forward to continuing to survey my peers at Sage Creek High School and determining which video game genre is the general favorite for anxiety-mitigation purposes. I do hope that you all will stay tuned for further updates, especially if you enjoy video games as much as I do, since I am certain that this will be an exciting journey.