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Your help needed: PhD research on why people choose to self-host (survey.lpt.feri.um.si)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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Hi everyone,

I’m a PhD student in Computer Science researching why people choose to self-host software—what motivates you, what concerns you, and what factors affect your decision-making.

To better understand this, I’ve prepared a short anonymous survey (~10 minutes). Your insights as part of the self-hosting community would be incredibly valuable for this research.

🔗 Survey link: https://survey.lpt.feri.um.si/376953?newtest=Y&lang=en&s=ls

This study is part of my doctoral research at the University of Maribor, Slovenia, conducted under the supervision of Assist. Prof. Lili Nemec Zlatolas, PhD. All responses are anonymous and used strictly for academic purposes.

If you’ve ever self-hosted anything—or even just considered it—I’d really appreciate your input.

Thanks a lot for your time, and feel free to ask me anything about the project (luka.hrgarek@um.si)!

Cheers!

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[–] 22 points 1 year ago* (6 children)

I use self-hosted services in the following categories as much as possible...

That question could really use a "not applicable" option. I don't operate any home automation solutions, so any answer from me would be invalid, and neutral answers because the item is not relevant will appear the same as neutral answers because I use both self-hosted and externally hosted solutions (e.g. Mullvad for privacy and Tailscale to get around CGNAT).

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  • [–] [S] 8 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    Thanks for the comment: that’s a really good point to raise.

    Just to clarify: the statement "I use self-hosted services in the following categories as much as possible" is meant to reflect how fully you make use of self-hosted solutions in each area. A response like “Strongly agree” would indicate that you actively use and take full advantage of self-hosting in that category.

    If you don’t use solutions in a particular category at all — whether that’s because you don’t need them, aren’t interested, or use only external services — then it’s completely appropriate to select a disagreeing option (e.g. “Disagree” or “Strongly disagree”). In this context, lower agreement simply indicates low or no use, regardless of the reason.

    From a methodological standpoint, the data will be analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM). This approach requires a complete set of responses across the measured constructs. If we included a “not applicable” option, it would create missing values in the dataset and potentially lead to excluding the entire response for that part of the analysis — which would significantly reduce the usable sample size.

    That said, I really appreciate your feedback! :)

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    I get why you're taking that approach but you risk serious misclassification bias. The replies have stated people are using both "disagree" and "neither agree nor disagree" to indicate they are not hosting a particular kind of service. From your description of your research it sounds like disagree and strongly disagree should indicate that the individual uses company hosted services instead of self hosted services for those domains. The relationship between views on privacy and types of services self hosted is going to be confounded by that.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago

    Yeh, I took "don't agree or disagree" to be the N/A.
    It seemed the most neutral.
    I don't really use anything for bookmark sharing/management. So I don't strongly disagree or strongly agree with self hosting it.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    If this was the expectation, then it should have been a checklist and/or had N/A available. I don't think your data for this section will be accurate since myself/others replying did not use it this way.

    I used "disagree" as "I am using a non-self hosted service for this," the middle as "N/A" and the agree as "I am hosting a service for this"...

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