New to the Guild & I am in RL a Researcher of MMOs needing your help

My wife and I are new to the guild and look forward to meeting you all in Telara. We are excited to be a part of this family.

I am also a PhD student studying MMOs at the University of Utah.  I am trying to find ethnic minorities who role-play. Research suggests thatmarginalized groups role-play more than the majority group so I want to see why ethnic minorities role-play. 

So if you are an ethnic minority or know of any ethnic minorities who role-play, please send them my way and refer them to this thread or my email address rody.rodriguez@utah.edu. Even though the research says ethnic minorities are role-playing, I can't seem to find any -- besides myself. Thus, if I can use you all to snowball finding participants that would be great. 

Sincerely, 
Dyonisus

Interesting. Out of curiosity - can you clarify what you mean by "role-play"? Do you mean groups that play online/video roleplaying games or roleplaying in the traditional sense: story-driven campaigns. That includes table-top roleplaying, live-action roleplaying, or online roleplaying campaigns. I ask because my experience has been that there is a significant difference between the two. I know a LOT of young Asian Americans who play video games, MMORPGs included. On the other hand, if you're talking about roleplaying in the traditional sense, my experience in college has been that minorities are underrepresented. Out of approximately thirty members in the table-top/wargaming/board game club, maybe five were non-white, while the university as a whole is about forty percent non-white. This might not be something I can extrapolate to America, but it was noticeable while I was an undergraduate. I'm curious about whatever paper suggests that marginalized groups role-play more than the majority group, especially if they reject their null hypothesis with a 95+% confidence interval.

Been thinking about this since I read it yesterday and Ziphayl brings up good points. Having done role-play games of all types since 1980, I've seen quite a bit of changes. At one point women were even a minority. I was like the odd one out being the only female in table top until a couple of my friends and I lived closer together for awhile so we could game. In live action gaming, which I started doing in 1993, women were about 10% and now it is much closer to even. There are even more women helping run live action games. As for racial selection, I've always seen it as more predominately whites for the tabletop and live action roleplay. Same goes for the hard core story telling roleplayers that add that element to their online gaming. I can say in the online arena I have had the pleasure of gaming with people all over the world and different cultures do have different ways of viewing role-play and gaming. To really make a solid case of what culture roleplays what way, you need fully define role-play, the context it is in, and maybe even some of the gaming view. Then from there create your questions for surveying the group you wish to target.

You all bring up very good points. Yes, I am looking at ethnic (i.e. racial) minorities who role-play in MMOs. I am finding many women who role-play, but are not racial minorities. Although they are a marginalized group, I was trying to be specific as possible to make it easier for myself. Unfortunately, I have been finding few ethnic minorities who role-play, sadly. So if anyone can point me to anyone you know who role-plays in MMOs and also is an ethnic minority, then please let me know. I am needing them asap for the reason that it is the end of the semester -- I am actually writing my analysis now, but it feels anemic because of the lack of data. This is a qualitative study based off of a quantitative study done by one of the big-wigs in the field, so I am analyzingthe "why" this group role-plays. Anyway, look forward to see you all online. Have a great weekend and thanks for writing back.