Derek - Sally McMillan's review on measurements of interactivity might help here. McMillan, S.J. (2002). Exploring Models of Interactivity from Multiple Research Traditions: Users, Documents, And Systems. In L. Lievrouw and S. Livingston (Eds.), Handbook of New Media (pp. 162-182). London: Sage. You should review the voluminous work of Sheizaf Rafaeli for how to determine various types of measures of engagement and participation in CMC environments. http://sheizaf.rafaeli.net/ >> Academic Publications The GDOF group in Germany is brilliant methodologically, this is the easiest citation I can find, but they have many, many more: Batinic, B., U.-D. Reips, et al., Eds. (2002). Online Social Sciences. Seattle, Hogrefe & Huber. I'm sure there's more but these could give you a good start in previous methodological approaches to comparing CMC/IRL activity(ies). Cheers, Denise Denise N. Rall, PhD Southern Cross University, Lismore NSW 2480 AUSTRALIA Tues: Room T2.17, +61 (0)2 6620 3577 Mobile 0438 233 344 http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/esm/staff/pages/drall/ Virtual member, Cybermetrics Group, University of Wolverhampton, UK http://cybermetrics.wlv.ac.uk/index.html Get the name you always wanted with the new y7mail email address. www.yahoo7.com.au/y7mail