Research Request
Just got this request from a graduate student and figured I’d pass it along:
Dear Mr. McCloud:
My name is Megan Milliken and I am a University of Chicago graduate student conducting research on comic book readership. I’m interested in demographic trends of comic book readers as well as the medium’s effect on readers’ consumption of other cultural goods and participation in civic activities. I’m motivated to do this research first and foremost because I am an avid comic book fan who has derived a great deal of pleasure and inspiration from both the content itself and the community. I’m interested in how comic books have impacted readers and hope to see what it is about a comic book that keeps a reader coming back month after month. That said I have two surveys (the first is for under 18 respondents, and the other is for respondents that are 18 and over) that I have assembled. Would you be interested in posting these surveys to your blog and encouraging readers to participate? It is intended for comic book readers as well as non comic book readers as I would like to compare responses between these two groups. Please let me know if you could do this and if you have questions regarding the study.
Thank you and take care,
Megan Milliken
So feel free to click on the above links, if any of you would like to help Megan with her research.
March 3, 2021
Megan -> Hopefully the survey was not only for people in the USA (I got the feeling it may have been as I was doing it) . Filled it in anyways, hope it helps 🙂
Scott -> Love the books. Just finished “Reinventing Comics” and about to start “Making Comics”
i just started reinventing, but i don’t think its as good as the first.
I don’t think this survey is scientifically relevant. There may be skewed results (due to non-random sampling). For example, a large portion of people who taking her survey by coming from this site will answer the question on reading blogs by the comic book writers/artists as “yes”.
Thank you, Mr. McCloud, for posting this! Ahmed, I’m distributing this survey wide and far and will account for potential bias in my analysis. i am acutely aware that because this is an internet survey there will be considerable issues with the credibility of the responses. As a novice, i hope my research will pique the interest of more statistical savvy researchers and that this will serve as a test run for my own research later on. I appreciate your comments and your participation.
[…] Scott McCloud passed on a request for participation in research on comic reader demographics. It sounds mysterious, doesn’t it? It’s just a 58 question poll with some stereotypical […]