Hi all,

This is a bit of a strange one but I wondered if anyone else had experienced this.

I'm in my third year of my PhD and have mainly been using the wonderful world-wide web to recruit participants (e.g. social networking sites and mailing lists) for my studies.
My research topic is quite applied and so many people have an opinion - great for my research - not so great if their frustration is aimed at me!
Some of the emails I have received have been really quite pointed. Several people have suggested that this is one disadvantage of online research as comments (and commentators!) can remain anonymous. Not so great if I'm having a particularly slumpy day and open my inbox to an email of why I shouldn't be doing my research.

Has anyone else experienced this?

I think all research gets this to some extent. I learnt to leave a 'comments' section at the end of my online surveys so I didn't get irritating emails like "your questions are repetitive" to which I had to just say something like "that is because I am using a questionnaire that has been used for 20 years in my field, it answers a range of similar questions to make sure it is measuring the information correctly" blah blah blah.

My subject is quite emotive as well so I had comments like "when are YOU going to do something about this issue??"

It is stressful, but do try to remain professional at all times - don't send off any 'silly' replies and keep any emails in a separate file in case you get any issues with ethics etc - you only need one person to complain to cause you a lot of stress.