It is important to remember that folk music is always contemporary--it can draw on traditional material, it can be based on traditional material, and can even be traditional material, but it is always played in the present, to please a contemporary audience--

If I were you, I would start in a rather different place--I would take a group of contemporary folk performers, and I would collect their set lists and analyze and classify what is there--"what pleases the contemporary folk audience, and where does it come from?" Youre first job would be in defining the audience and its performers, and differententiating it from all the other contemporary audiences--That would even be a dissertation in itself! Then start collecting set lists--