James, Knapen et al have just submitted arXiv:0802.4421 a work to Astronomy & Astrophysics. These authors have been working on Star Formation in the local universe using the results from observation of 863 galaxies with z<0.01. Up to 327 galaxies were observed in Hα.

The Star Formation Rate (SFR) density of the Local Universe found by them is similar to that obtained previously by the UCM survey Gallego et al 1995 ApJ 455, L1 ("The Current Star Formation Rate of the Local Universe" read this news ) and Pérez-González et al 2003 ApJ 587, L27, "Luminosity and Stellar Mass Functions of Local Star-forming Galaxies"), with some uncertaintes mainly due to internal extinction correction and calibration used for obtaining SFR.

As you can see in their figure 5 (luminosity function) of the paper the similarity extends all the range of Hα luminosities covered by the UCM survey, but there is an interesting increase for low luminosity galaxies.