In reply to alasdair19:
Hi Alastair,
I’ve had several “forwardings” of the results from members now but can’t agree that it is a decent survey. I rely on the opinion of people I know who use surveys professionally in their research work. They were not impressed by the design of the survey: questions relating to multiple issues were never going to produce unambiguous results, never mind the leading questions based on disinformation. The presentation of the results has been judged equally amateurish and inconsistent: “whoever produced these results was neither a scientist nor a statistician.”
Personally, I do find the results interesting in that the tabulated information is quite selective:
1. Why are there no tables for some questions?
2. Why are some answers discounted like boxes 4-7 in table 9? A good stats package would be able to process that information.
3. Why does table 6 not express the results as percentages of the total responses rather than a percentage only of the 67% who attend "at least occasionally" even though a majority of that 67% attend less than once a year? (I expect you can guess: it makes it seem like 70% value the London lectures rather than less than 50% of the total responses.)
The summary is interesting too. There is plenty of evidence of verbal sleight of hand.
The timing of the survey is described as “inevitable” "to ensure securing results in time for the AGM" but this ignores the fact that the committee took seven months to construct the survey: procrastination or what? It should have been obvious that the views of active climbers, who would normally be focussed on climbing in the summer weeks, would be unlikely to be recorded and that alone should have encouraged a speedier approach and more appropriate timing. The timing of the “Library Special” in the Newsletter shows what can be done when the establishment puts its collective mind to something but perhaps that was the tail wagging this particular dog.
The comment on climbing activity is another case in point, cherry-picking one positive result and spinning this into an "active" membership. There is no mention of the fact that the single biggest category relating to almost every question regarding climbing is the "Never" group and in all but one case this group combines with the next least active category to form a majority. eg. 56% climb UK rock less than 5 times a year including 27% who never climb. Even in the Alps a majority of members go no more than once every 2-3 years. These figures would be worrying for any climbing club but should be especially so for one that claims to be at the cutting edge of British Alpinism.
Later 52% agreement is described as "a mixed response" relating to overall sponsorship of the club but "endorsement" when relating to increasing the membership to 5000. Why the difference of interpretation of the same figure?
There were also possibilities for free text entry but there is absolutely no mention of those responses in the summary.
And of course those non-members from the wider climbing community who cared enough about Alpinism to take the trouble to respond have been completely ignored.
Large claims are made for “a survey of members being asked to respond on issues of significant importance to the future running of their club” but what initiatives are going to develop from these results? None that I can see happening, though there is a lot of wishful thinking about recruitment.
The survey was clearly designed to endorse the status quo and that is exactly what it has done.
But let's not forget that the AC establishment only agreed to the President’s suggestion of a survey in order to head off any investigation into alternatives to the inadequate premises at Charlotte Road because that might include a move from London, hence the bias present in the "information pages." As a result the AC has simply added a new twist to the old saying whereby lies and damned lies have in this case produced the statistics.
Perhaps it's not surprising that 50% of the membership did not respond. What would have been the point?
Nil Carborundum!
Dave