Virtual Community For Members Of The Community Perspective Evaluation Index System

The thesis is going to study virtual communities, aiming at making an exploratory development on measurement system of virtual communities and the methods applied in virtual communities. Starting from the conception, dimensions of virtual communities, the thesis reviews several aspects of literatures, such as influencing factors of virtual community performance, virtual community evaluation. At last we make a conclusion about the literature study and propose a measurement system and research model.On the basis of literature review and an investigation of the virtual community members in China, the author identifies some main existing problems, such as lacking evaluation system from perspective of virtual community members, losing control of investigation process, simplifying data analysis and making poor use of analysis results.In order to resolve these problems, the author presents a measurement index system, including multiple dimensions and layers, and two questionnaires transformed from the system. And from all kinds of virtual community experts we decide the index power. The author uses SPSS 11.0 for Windows to make a reliability analysis and a validity analysis on the data obtained through a questionnaire survey on virtual communities members. The results indicate that the measurement index system is reasonable and applicable for virtual communities in China.On the basis of above, the author presents three methods of analyzing the data obtained through investigation: correction analysis, which is used to determine the correction of foregoing variables and results variables; analysis of variances, which is used to identify the differences of influencing factors in different kinds of virtual communities; regression analysis, which is used not only to eliminate the correction because of the third variable but also to determine the degree of importance of influencing factors.