Oh, as part of media studies or social anthropology or sociology, studies of what people do with their time and of creative efforts is entirely legitimate. Fanfiction's a huge phenomenon, so why shouldn't people study it?
As for the survey, what bothers me about it from the perspective of rigorous methodology is that it won't be valid or reliable. Forget sampling; it'd be far too hard to get valid and representative sample sizes for this kind of study in a tight time-frame. There are two main problems that I can see. First, people can fill in the questionnaire any number of times. There's no way of checking for multiple returns from the same person: you're not asked for an email address and there's no indication that an IP is collected. I tested: you
can go back and fill it in again. Second, with it being passed around in different fandoms, the researcher has no control over who's filling it in and what fandoms they're from - though that's more easily explained away in a methods discussion than the first problem.
Also, I can't really see what she's going to do with the fic and author names or how they'll help her research.
Ah well, it's good to see fandom and fanfic getting attention
Wendy
