Buh, so many questions to answer.
Yes, the thesis is about cultural transfer but the cultural thing will be mostly covered with analysis of the games + interviews with translation groups etc. In the end visual novels is for much of the western world a really new topic so most questions in the survey are to get some general player data. But you are totally right, the questions about the amount played is badly designed. I wanted to clearly get a view of the new/casual players and set the bar very low, forgetting that 151h+ is set really low. But I will note your feedback here to mention that in my thesis.
To give you an idea about the thesis:
What might surprise you is the fact that it's written for the history
department. In the end you only need a professor that is cool with it.
Game studies (kinda a broad topic as many fields like history, cultural
studies, psychology, computer science, sociology etc. are applicable) are
becoming more and more common so it's fine. My focus is more or less pure
(historical) cultural transfer though as I can't do "game studies" on
visual novels without knowing japanese and being able to play them in the
original way. In the end you only need a usable focus and the right
keywords and you can write about any topic in any class.
So what am I researching?
1) The japanese culture has been "disrupted" from the west two times, 1853
and 1945, you see these bits in the japanese culture today too and in
these games.
2) Visual novels originate from western adventure games (~1980s), how did
they become typical japanese?
3) In light of 2) why are visual novels a japanese culture product? What
does this include? (e.g. japanese games for japanese people, japanese
development tools, special gaming culture (eroge) - also comiket etc.)
4) When parts of a countries culture appear in another country you can
talk about a culture transfer. How does this happen (mainly fan
translations, now also companies like JAST -> translation = culture
transfer)?