Fan fiction genres survey

[hildlos]

This is an appeal to my fellow fan fiction readers and writers out there: I need your help! I’m currently working on my PhD in fan fiction and popular literature genres, and this includes doing a short survey to gain some sort of overview over fan fiction readers and writers, and their fandoms and genres. I’m especially interested in replies from Harry Potter, NCIS, and Doctor Who fans, but everyone else can reply as well. In fact, the more the better!

The survey is completely anonymous (I don’t even log your IP address), and all required questions have a “Would prefer not to say” option. I honestly don’t know how long it takes, that will depend on how detailed you want to answer some of the questions. It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes if you’re really in a rush, but please try to take your time! I also don’t have any reward to offer, except my eternal thanks. If you do answer, the answers may be quoted or included in my doctorate thesis (and in a book version of my thesis if one is made).

Click here to take the survey now. Remember to click the “Finished” button when you’re finished. :)

Please spread the word people, the survey will only be open until the 16th of September!

Comments

[kindkit]

At what university are you conducting your research? In what field? Could you please tell us about your research in more detail? What are you trying to demonstrate/explore with this survey? And, crucially, do you have approval from your institution's IRB or other authority to conduct research on human subjects?

Fandom has been burned more than once by people claiming to be conducting academic research. The last time, it turned out to be in the service of a non-academic book making all kinds of sexist claims about male and female sexuality based in part upon a hideously designed, intrusive survey that they asked fandom people to take.

The lack of concrete information in your post makes me nervous, and I certainly won't take your survey before I see your response to these questions.

[hildlos]

Thank you for asking! I realise that I'm a bit too used to posting on the Internet under a form of anonymity, and so I didn't give any details. I also wanted to keep things short, which may have been a mistake as I left out some information.

I'm with the English department at Trinity College, Dublin, and like I mentioned I'm doing my thesis on fan fiction and popular literature genres. I am examining the definitions and formulas of three popular literature genres (romance, humour, and action/adventure) that are also popular categories on FanFiction.Net, in order to highlight the relationship between popular literature and fan fiction.

I am looking at fan fiction from Doctor Who, NCIS, and Harry Potter in an attempt to determine if fan fiction in these genres follows the same genre conventions as popular literature or if the genres have changed in any way.

With this survey I mostly want two things:
1) It allows me to point at a (pretty limited, but still) set of recent facts for my thesis, such as "what is the gender/age distribution amongst fan fiction readers and writers in these fandoms?"
2) As well as using close reading of fan fiction to study genre conventions, this survey will give me an insight into what fan fiction readers and writers themselves look for when they read or write a genre.

Now, it might have been wiser to try and restrict the survey to fans of these three genres, but trying to gain a bigger overview of fandom and its thoughts on genre was very tempting, and it might yield some interesting results.

As for approval - no, I don't have that, and thank you so much for bringing this to my attention! My supervisor, who suggested I do a survey, didn't mention it, and I didn't think of it - which I should have, since I remember the survey debacle well and was determined not to act like they did... :/

I'll be emailing her now to sort out approval, and if for some reason I don't get it, rest assured that I won't be using this survey.

I hope this helps!

ETA: I've been told to contact someone else; he's apparently out of town right now but I hope he gets back to me soon.

[kindkit]

Thanks for clarifying things.