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The AO3 Demographics Survey 2024 was a 37 question survey of the demographics and behaviours of AO3 users, conducted via Google Forms during January 2024. This survey serves as a follow-up to the AO3 Census 2013 project, which was conducted approximately ten years earlier, in September 2013. The 2024 survey received 16,131 valid responses, making it one of the largest surveys of its type ever conducted, but there are still limitations to the data gathered.
Sample Size
The survey received 16,131 valid responses, meaning it significantly surpassed the 2013 survey, which received 10,005 responses. To the best of our knowledge, the AO3 Demographics Survey 2024 is the second-largest multi-fandom demographics survey ever conducted, behind only The Fansplaining Shipping Survey (2019).
However, it is worth noting the relative growth of AO3 since the original survey was conducted. At the time of the 2013 survey, there were only 212,000 registered accounts on AO3, so 10,005 users represented a proportion of roughly 5% of the registered userbase. As of the end of the 2024 survey, AO3 now has 6.7 million registered users, so this study reached a sample size equal to only 0.24% of the current registered userbase.
(N.B. In both surveys, a registered AO3 account was not required to participate, but these numbers show the proportional increase in overall AO3 users.)
Sampling Methods
As is common when researching a decentralised community like fandom, we had to rely on snowball sampling (word-of-mouth) to inform users about the survey. At the end of the survey, users were directed to a page with sharing links, including a copy-paste message suitable for Discord and the official Tumblr post. During the survey, we added links to posts on Twitter/X, the r/Fanfiction Reddit, Mastodon, and TikTok, all created by fans supporting the survey.
Of these linked posts, the Tumblr post saw by far the most activity, with 2,630 reblogs and over 1,900 likes by the end of the survey window. The Reddit post received 96 upvotes and 14 comments, the Twitter/X post received 4,350 views, 40 retweets and 33 likes, the Mastodon post received 31 reblogs and 12 favourites, and the TikTok received 27 likes and 3 shares. However, we are aware that many more posts than we have official records of were made by people supporting the survey, so these numbers are likely to be an undercount of how much spread the survey received on these and other social platforms.
Based on this information, it seems likely that the greatest number of people participating discovered the survey via Tumblr, but many others were linked via other social media platforms. This is likely to be reflected in the data on website usage, although the survey did not directly ask users how they discovered the survey. This diversity of advertising locations means the data collected is not completely analogous to the 2013 survey, which was advertised almost exclusively on Tumblr. However, this was likely inevitable, as the use of social media by fandoms has shifted significantly within that time.
Another, more inherent, limitation of the sample is in the language of the survey itself. The survey was only provided in English, and the vast majority of participants are likely to be fluent English speakers (particularly due to the issues described in “Spam Responses” below). Although some volunteers offered to help translate the survey, we were not comfortable asking for that level of work without compensation, which we could not currently afford.
As with any word-of-mouth sample, the spread of the survey via existing social groups means that unknown biases may have arisen. Even within the groups acknowledged above – English-speaking AO3 users who are active on Tumblr and/or other fandom-related social media – this survey cannot be assumed to be a representative sample. However, we hope to add to the growing body of data gathered about fandom demographics and behaviour.
Spam Responses
Between approximately 6:45pm and 7:45pm GMT on the first day of the survey, the survey form recorded 12,340 blank answers. Due to the volume and the lack of answers to required questions, they were judged to be generated by some form of automated program. In order to prevent the large volume of these responses from crashing the survey, responses were turned off for approximately ten minutes in order to add a spam-checking question.
All the blank responses were excluded from the survey data, and they were not included in the count of valid responses given above.
Because the spam-checking question had not been tested prior to its implementation, it was less than satisfactory. In order to prevent further automated responses, the question was intended to be difficult for computers to parse: “please enter the word for the number after 3… in lowercase.” (The intended answer for this was “four.”)
Some users were confused by the phrasing of this question, believing the answer to be “three” or attempting to enter the answer with a capital letter. (The lowercase restriction was a technical limitation imposed by Google forms, as a single exact correct answer had to be provided.) After around 24 hours an “Incorrect answer” message was added informing users of the correct answer, although some remained confused by the case-sensitivity. Unfortunately, this question as a whole acted as a barrier to some users – particularly those for whom English is not a first language – and it is likely it caused some potential respondents to exit the survey entirely.
We are sorry to anyone who struggled with this issue, and if this project is ever repeated we will aim to create a more user-friendly system of avoiding automated responses.