## 4 Methods  
Our project focused on members of a specific online forum, which we have identified as \"The Playhouse.\" This forum was established in 2006 and has more than 4000 registered members. Of these, an average of 300 members log in daily, with an average of 497 new comments posted on a daily basis. Between November 2009 and January 2010, the members of this forum were offered a survey that asked for demographic information and personal collecting and online forum behavior. Of the 297 members who began the survey, 285 members completed at least 75% of the questions. The demographics of the community are presented in Table 1. Overall, they establish that the forum was predominately women (95%), almost entirely white (91%), and had a median income in the $40,000-$59,999 range. The Playhouse group is what [PERSON] would classify as an \"electronic bulletin board\" [2], in that it focused on a specific product. In fact, 93.4% of members reported that they used the forum specifically to find out information about new American Girl products. The Playhouse does have some features of a \"chat room\", but discussions there were limited to related American Girl products. Additionally, the relationships in the Playhouse are much more tangible to members--30.7% of the members reported that they view the other members of the forum as either casual or close friends. In addition to the survey, we used virtual ethnography to examine the actual interactions between the members. This observation period extended from 2009 to 2011, and included an in-depth review of the community archives that date back to spring of 2006. In particular, we analyzed the \"Introductions\" section of the forum in order to establish the racial demographics of regular users. One of the authors ([PERSON]) had established membership in 2007 and actively participated in the community. This long-term membership contributed to rapport between researcher and the subjects, and also helped contribute to the excellent survey response rate. As well as including observations of the public interactions on the forum, we also include analysis from interpersonal messages shared with us by members. \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c} \hline
**Question** & **Respenses** & **Percentages** \\ \hline \multirow{4}{*}{Gender} & Women & 94.5\% (309) \\ \cline{2-3}  & Men & 3.7\% (12) \\ \cline{2-3}  & No answer & 1.8\% (6) \\ \hline \multirow{4}{*}{Race (multiple responses allowed)} & Black, African American or African & 3.1\% (10) \\ \cline{2-3}  & White & 90.5\% (296) \\ \cline{2-3}  & American Indian or Alaskan native & 2.8\% (9) \\ \cline{2-3}  & Asian & 4.3\% (14) \\ \cline{2-3}  & Latino or Hispanic & 6.1\% (20) \\ \cline{2-3}  & Some other race & 0.3\% (1) \\ \cline{2-3}  & No answer & 1.8\% (6) \\ \hline \multirow{4}{*}{Household income} & Under \$200,000 & 11.3\% (36) \\ \cline{2-3}  & \$20,000–39,999 & 16.0\% (51) \\ \cline{2-3}  & \$40,000–59,999 & 15.7\% (50) \\ \cline{2-3}  & \$60,000–79,999 & 11.3\% (36) \\ \cline{2-3}  & \$80,000–99,999 & 9.7\% (31) \\ \cline{2-3}  & \$100,000 and over & 19.1\% (61) \\ \cline{2-3}  & No answer & 16.7\% (53) \\ \hline \multirow{4}{*}{Marital status} & Single, never married & 40.4\% (132) \\ \cline{2-3}  & Married or parthered & 52.6\% (172) \\ \cline{2-3}  & Separated or divorced & 2.7\% (9) \\ \cline{2-3}  & No answer & 4.3\% (14) \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{Children} & Have children & 50.9\% (154) \\ \cline{2-3}  & No children & 49.1\% (148) \\ \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 1: Demographics of the Playhouse community members. For the purposes of this research, the archives of the community were treated as transcripts. As in traditional ethnography, intervention of the researcher can unintentionally alter virtual community interactions. Thus, our analysis of the public forum interactions only includes those threads where the researchers were not participants.