Doctoral student asks for survey responses from Discworld fans

Eve Smith writes: I am currently working towards a PhD on Discworld at Liverpool John Moores University. You can help me with my research by filling out a questionnaire at www.survey.ljmu.ac.uk/discworld2 .

Rather than a straightforward literary analysis of Discworld my PhD falls within the discipline of cultural studies and is looking specifically at how comedy interacts with society. As part of this I am very interested in finding out about Discworld fans. I have selected subscribers of Discworld Monthly as a target group because you represent a diverse level of fandom, from a reader who may at one time have tried to discover a reading order for the books and then thought it might be interesting to hear about developments in the Discworld, through to the most avid fan who goes to every book signing and convention and has a vast collection of Discworld artefacts.

Much of the questionnaire gives options that you are asked to select. However, there are a number of questions asking why you like certain characters or books and although I would be grateful for even a simple a response I will read and consider all responses even if they are verging on essay length. I anticipate that with short answers to the why type questions that the questionnaire should take 15-20 minutes to complete. Obviously if you give longer answers this will take more or your time, but it will also make my research a lot
more interesting.

Finally the ethics committee have asked me to exclude under 16's from this research. I think this is a shame particularly because I am focussing on the Tiffany books in another part of my research, but I have to follow the rules. So please if you are under 16 do not attempt to complete the questionnaire. If you are over 16 the questionnaire can be found at www.survey.ljmu.ac.uk/discworld2.