I recently came across a request for information from Paige Brown Jarreau, a Ph.D candidate at Louisiana State University, doing research on science blogging.
I'm not an established journalist by any means but I do write about scientific topics fairly often, both here and on Google+. I think I spend too much time reading about science to stop and write anything about it. I also have many other interests than science to write about.
Anyway, like typical behavioral research this survey includes an informed consent release for participants. I like that and thought it was a nice touch. I've completed many surveys, like customer focus group types of things at the mall, and many of them don't actually include those statements and releases.
The survey opens with questions about the survey participant's science blog to get a reading on what type of science the author writes about and what sort of audience they have. Speaking of audience, I'd like to thank you both for reading my blog. Yeah, I like to have my jokes fall flat on their faces in my writing. It's that kind of blog.
And then the survey continues, as they do, with questions about blogging with a psuedonym, blogging for pay, editorial constraints, sources for topics, and engaging with controversial topics. As much as has been written about these topics, there's far too little real data actually addressing them. All in all a good survey and I'm eager to see the results.
