UKC

Hello folks;
i am currently at university in my last year of studying for a degree in sports sciences; BSc (Hons) Coaching.
and i am working on a research project that looks into the effects on a climbers self efficacy and confidence after experienceing or witnessing an accident,
i would be very grateful to anybody that would be happy to take the time to fill out AND complete my questionnaire.
please find the link to the questionnaire below.
Thanks;
Eric.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/9YXKQD5

In reply to Ericrd:

Done

In reply to Terrance Glancy:
Thank you very much Terrance,
I appreciate it very much.
And a big thank you in advance to anybody else that COMPLETES the questionnaire.
Thanks folks;
Eric

In reply to Ericrd:

Is this questionnaire only for trad climbing? It won't let you submit without answering about gear placements. It was quite annoying to fill the form then not be able to submit.

In reply to Ericrd:
Done.

However I doubt you'll get much out of my answers as very little about MY attitudes or MY climbing has changed after seeing several accidents. I just no longer believe a word any other climber says about their ability until after I've seen them climb and there is nothing in the survey relating to people's confidence in other climbers.

In reply to Ericrd:
Self efficacy? Is that a word? Tell me what that is and I'll do your questionnaire...

In reply to Ericrd:

Completed your questionnaire although my accident was bouldering so some of the questions are irrelevant.

It is quite difficult to answer some of the questions as most of the time the answer would be 'it depends'. It depends upon the route, the landing, the weather, who you're with, how much sleep you had last night, what mood you're in and a whole host of other factors that you just can't quite out your finger on.

You may find reading some of Mina's stuff on psychology of climbing interesting /useful along with Hazel Findley's comments about being bold.

In reply to bullybones:


Yes it is...

http://lmgtfy.com

In reply to Ericrd:

Done

In reply to Ericrd:

http://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/t.php?t=591384

Haven't we seen something like this before??

In reply to iccle_bully:
Self-efficacy with a hyphen, OK - it roughly equates to persistence in task completion (doggedness) as far as I can see. I've seen several accidents, all quite different when I think about it...I'll choose just one.

In reply to Ericrd:

done.

I think you left out any time element - sometimes there are temporary after effects and changes in practice which fade with time. in fact I would guess that is the norm and time is a very important factor.

In reply to Ericrd:

Done. One of the better surveys. Simple sensible questions, simple answer system!

In reply to Ericrd:

Don't you need to ask how serious the accident was? I'm fairly sure seeing an accident where someone sprains an ankle is going to have less effect on confidence than one where someone is badly injured.

In reply to Ericrd:

Completed. I suffered a serious (life-threatening) accident in 2006 but it seemed to have little effect on my climbing short-term (once I got out of hospital and could move again!) and almost none long-term. In fact, I climb a bit harder now than I did then, since retirement has given me the time to do more of it. I imagine the lack of effect may be because I don't have a particularly deep or complicated psyche.

In reply to Ericrd:

Done.

In reply to Ericrd:
I tried but I am afraid I failed before the first question.

You ask "Please rate how confident you felt before experience/witness of accident and how you felt after" and then ask a series of questions asking for percentages for before or after the accident.

Sorry to be picky but this is far too poorly phrased, vague and open. Do you mean, 1 year later or as I lay on the ground waiting for the helicopter?

In reply to Ericrd:

Not a bad survey! For something very difficult to quantify, that's a pretty fair effort and actually easier to answer than I thought at first.

Here's some qualitative comments about my responses. My accident was very early in my climbing career, I fell off a grit route and had to go to hospital and came out on crutches. Since then my climbing has changed a lot not really due to the accident but by getting much more experience: so my answers don't really isolate the causal influence of the accident. I can't separate "before the accident" and "after the accident" from "being a beginner" and "being experienced", as the accident happened at a time when I was transitioning between the two (although of course it's an ever-sliding scale), and it was instrumental in that transition. Indeed, the accident happened at just the right time, and hurt just enough to be a great learning experience and not leaving permanent damage.

Good luck!

In reply to Ericrd:

Done - cpuple of observations:

there's no real allowance for time elapsed - ie the effects of an accident may affecyou greatly near the time and diminish over time - as in my case my confoidence was shaken for a while but whthwe that has anything to do with my current levels of cation etc 20 years on is debateable/unknowable.
It was on a sport route too so the gear placements questions are not that relevant

In reply to bullybones:


It's simpler than that. It's your belief that you can do something. So I might say to you "in a moment I'm going to ask you to solve an algebra problem. On a scale of 1 to 10 how confident are you that you can do this?"

In reply to iccle_bully:



No it isn't. It's two

In reply to Ericrd:

I would imagine that most people that have been involved in accidents have been involved in more than one. So you need to specify "your first accident" or "your worst accident" depending on what you want to study.

You also do not make any distinctions about what really classifys as an "accident". Is an injury necessary for you to consider it an accident? Different respondents are going to be reporting their reactions to totally different incidents as it is set up currently; one person might be talking about how they fell off on the lead, sprained their ankle and then limped off home for some r&r, someone else might be takling about how they pulled of a giant boulder, killed their partner and were left disabled by the ground fall. The before-and-after for these situations is completely different and yet you will be considering them all together with no info differentiating them from each other.

There is a HUGE difference between an accident where you personally were injured and one where your partner was injured and one where the dude climbing next to you on the cliff was injured. I strongly suspect that the effect of the accident on the thought processes of a climber has a huge amount to do with who the accident happens to.

I tried to complete your questionaire but I'm not even sure when the first thing that would classify as an "accident" happened and I would be wildly guessing about how confident I felt about different aspects of climbing either before or after an accident that happened 5+ years ago.

There are obviously many many more variables to take into account but I'll stop listing them. My point would be that while I don't know exactly what you are hoping to show with your survey, I can't imagine how the diverse set of situations you are analysing, coupled with the completely subjective, and in most cases retrospectively guessed, answers can lead to any valid conclusion.

I think you would get more useful information by disecting climbing essays about specific accidents (and god knows, there is no shortage of them) and then contacting the authors and asking if they would mind replying to you with an analysis of how their personal feelings about risk changed as a result of the accident (assuming they can remember). This approach still has plenty of flaws but would surely yield more useful information.

Though it would require quite a bit more time and effort than making an online survey

In reply to Mark Torrance:


So why don't they just call it self-belief or just confidence? OTOH the Wiki article says that self-efficacy is not the same as confidence:

Confidence is a nonspecific term that refers to strength of belief but does not necessarily specify what the certainty is about. I can be supremely confident that I will fail at an endeavor. Perceived self-efficacy refers to belief in one's agentive capabilities, that one can produce given levels of attainment. A self-efficacy belief, therefore, includes both an affirmation of a capability level and the strength of that belief. Confidence is a catchword rather than a construct embedded in a theoretical system.

To me that reads like a hand-wavy justification for inventing a new name for something that already had a perfectly good, commonly-understood name to begin with. Even if there is a specific nuance of meaning to "self-efficacy", it seems to be familiar only within a fairly narrow field of knowledge so I personally wouldn't use it to introduce a topic in a forum not intended for that specialised audience.

In reply to Martin W:


It's a technical (though very widely used) psychological term and when properly used means confidence or belief that you can do a specific thing (or domain of things). I can't think of a common word that most people would understand that means precisely that.


Agreed. Jargon is neutral. It's its use that may or may not be problematic.