Sorry for my delay in responding. Because I'm a new member, I quickly hit my limit on forum comments (6 total, I believe) and had to wait for 24 hours before before I could comment further.
I really appreciate the responses thus far, including the critiques. I'm obviously new here, and I'm still learning about SL's cultural norms. I apologize for any faux pas I may have committed (and any others I'll likely commit in the future).
Folks have asked fair questions about my pedigree, my research, and my agenda. I really didn't want to draw much attention to myself (as opposed to my questions) in this thread, which is why I didn't initially disclose those details. But the questions are fair (and I can see that folks are wary because of the past behavior of researchers or journalists who have opened these kinds of threads before), so I'll answer them.
I'm a law professor at the University of Tennessee. Here's a link to my faculty profile: https://law.utk.edu/directory/nicholas-nugent/, and here are a couple of my recent publications: https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/wlr/vol98/iss2/7/, https://ctlj.colorado.edu/?p=708. Although these articles are more in the field of Internet Governance and may or may not be of interest to folks in SL. The papers are doctrinal, rather than empirical, which is standard fare for legal scholarship.
My project here is also Internet Governance-related. My purpose is to analyze the concept of digital property, inclusive of identity (aliases, avatars, etc.), goods (tokens, resources, entitlements), and realty (mostly websites). I'm interested in SL because of how much users invest into building up their avatars and acquiring digital goods. To what extent should the law treat such resources as property? (If you're interested, there's at least one case on this issue, which focused on SL assets: https://casetext.com/case/evans-v-linden-research-12).
So, my methodology here is qualitative rather than quantitative. I just want to understand how people think about their digital identities/goods and what kind of deprivation it would be if they lost them. That's why I haven't asked these questions in the form of an empirical survey in order to derive statistics or the like. Moreover, to be transparent, my research on SL will comprise only a portion of my research. The rest will be boring stuff like property theory and caselaw.
The output of this research project will be a full-length article in a legal academic journal. I'm not a journalist, and I have no intention of writing any kind of web article that would put SL users in a bad light. I'm just trying to understand the culture and the behavior, and talking directly with veteran users will provide the most direct path to that kind of information (although I will continue to explore the world myself in parallel).
Many thanks!
Nick