Martial Arts Participation Survey

**Thompson_acma** · Posted On: 3/17/2011 4:29pm

This is some great feedback and I really appreciate your help!
I was a little worried about posting on an open site but I have been very impressed with the professional feedback and support.
I struggled with the list of styles and the wording for a long time. The other issue was interpretation too - such as MMA.

Jim - yes, SurveyMonkey is an excellent tool. Very easy to use.

Soldiermedic - I am concerned about skew (bias). I am hoping the demographics info will allow me to identify skew. I am also trying a few other routes. The problem I was having with emails alone was an extremely low response rate and a low completion rate. That's bad news if you have a minimum sample size. You guys have some great points and observations!

I should have included boxing and greco-roman.

**Permalost** · Posted On: 3/17/2011 5:01pm

So are you gonna post the final paper here when you're done?

**Conde Koma** · Posted On: 3/19/2011 3:05am

neat stuff, hope i helped.

**Rivington** · Posted On: 3/19/2011 9:52am

I also took the survey. Don't know if it matters to what you're studying, but I did mark a bunch of responses at Not Important simply because I train in a Golden Gate Park (and also another smaller park by my house), so stuff like toilet facilities, kiddie classes, good parking lots etc. don't matter at all. If you do end up with a fair number of people who practice some CMAs, you may get more responses like that than you expect.

**Thompson_acma** · Posted On: 3/19/2011 11:46pm

I agree that those elements are likely not very important at many MA schools. The expectations part of the survey is based on a Service Quality Assessment tool that is geared for fitness centers. I am sure some of those items are more important in the big fitness centers. I would have preferred to use my own survey (tool) but making your own survey is more complex than I realized. You must first ensure it is a "valid tool" so I adapted an existing tool/survey.

I have been watching the statistics of the responses and I am disappointed that 80% of the responses are only from higher ranking men. All responses are needed but I think it is important to get women and beginners (less than 1 year) to participate ... but it is very difficult. Thanks for the help and feedback!

**Thompson_acma** · Posted On: 3/19/2011 11:50pm

For example, if the responses to the fear of crime index in the survey are different for men and women, then the correlation to motivations may be different as well.

**Permalost** · Posted On: 3/20/2011 12:37am

Can you say what kind of correlation you're looking looking at? In my experience, to come to any real conclusions you have to focus on some specific thing, rather than trying to use all the data you collect.

**MrGalt** · Posted On: 3/20/2011 3:51am

Not being a US resident any more I figured I shouldn't take the survey, but read through it. I wonder if other knockdown karate guys would end up choosing kickboxing rather than put themselves down for "karate - Goju, Shotokan..." I don't know if there's any desire to discriminate among styles in your survey, but I imagine the people who choose to do full contact karate and the people who choose to do point krotty might be different populations.

**Evergrey** · Posted On: 3/20/2011 10:37pm

I agree, I really wanted a box for "Kyokushin" or "full contact karate."

Also, I took the first half a while ago, but I didn't see much of a section that allowed for "wanting to fight hard" as a motivation for taking up a martial art. Sure, being able to defend myself is important. But I do Kyokushin because I love fighting hard... says the newbie woman. ;}