Upcoming guestblogger, Katie Freund sent me her latest survey, and asked me if I would be interested in posting it. Naturally, I was! Here’s how she explains it:

Here is the questionnaire I distributed among 8 different online vidding communities on Livejournal.com for the purposes of my postgraduate research (at the time, an MA thesis although I have since upgraded to the PhD programme). I sought to gather a variety of qualitative and quantitative data, as I desired both statistics on demographic composition of the community, internet and computer use, and fandoms participated in, as well as more thoughtful and open-ended long answer questions on copyright/fair use issues, the vidding community, and the art and practice of vidding itself. A full consent form was not deemed necessary for this online questionnaire, but those who took it were directed to a participant information sheet detailing the ethical concerns of completing this survey.

The survey was at first not well-received by the community as it the vidders several hours to complete, rather than the half hour or so I had indicated in the introduction. Also, many vidders commented that my questions were extremely difficult to answer and that things were not nearly so cut-and-dried as I may have thought (or hoped!). I then altered the introduction in response to their concerns and it was much better received as far as I can tell. To date, I have received 150 responses, but only 63 have completed all the sections (42%).

For more information about my research, please check out my research blog at http://fanthropology.blogspot.com or email me at fanthropology (at) gmail (dot) com.

If you’re interested, you can refer to (or take!) the survey here.