UKC

**Posted with permission of UKClimbing**

Hi all,

I've constructed this survey as part of my undergraduate dissertation research into ethnic minority participation in British climbing. I've been climbing for about 5 years myself and this topic has interested me since I started both in relation to sport in general and climbing more specifically. I would be hugely grateful if people could take the time to fill this out to help me with my dissertation research. There are 10 questions in total and it should take around 5 minutes to fill out on good old SurveyMonkey.

https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/GRVNRG2

I'll be happy to answer any questions as best as I can on this thread too.

Thanks!

Sandy Moore

In reply to Sandman:

Done! Hope the research goes well.

In reply to Natalie Berry - UKC:

Thanks Nat, currently looking at the responses and hoping I've not made too many design mistakes!

In reply to Sandman:

In response to some comments received in the actual survey so far, it is open to anyone to complete (regardless of ethic background) so apologies if that wasn't clear! Also, it's looking like I may have some people skipping questions which I thought I'd managed to ask SurveyMonkey to avoid; can anyone tell me if they've been able to skip questions?

Thanks!

Sandy

In reply to Sandman:

Done. Would be interested to see your findings if you can post them up on completion of your research.

In reply to Sandman:

You might want to avoid jargon/acronyms like "BME" where people not in the know have to guess what you might mean.

In reply to AlanLittle:


Quite. What on earth is BME?

In reply to whenry:


Body Mass Endex. When I get fed up of trying to shift the lard and eat a nice LGBT buttie.

In reply to Sandman:

Done.

iPhone warning: I only noticed the two right hand options existed on the third page-doesn't fit terribly well to my screen size!

In reply to Otis:

Is British an ethnic group?

In reply to whenry:

Had to google it. Black and Minority Ethnic.

In reply to Sandman:
* What is the highest level of education you have completed?

This question can't be skipped by putting trash in the 'other' box as filling in the box does not appear to be considered a valid answer for the question.

I didn't complete the survey because of that.

In reply to siwid:

Hi, I'll be more than happy to post up a link to the findings when they're done! Thanks for completing they survey!

Sandy

In reply to AlanLittle:

Hi Alan, I did use the full term in the opening paragraph followed by the abbreviation but I should have made it more clear throughout for sure. Apologies for confusion.

Thanks for filling the survey out.

Sandy

In reply to Removed User:

Hi, thanks for the heads up. I'll try to have a look at that question and see if I can figure out what the issue is!

Thanks again,

Sandy

In reply to Removed User:

Hi there,

Thanks for the heads up. I'll have a look at that question and try to figure out what the issue is with it.

Thanks again,

Sandy

In reply to Owen W-G:

Hi there,

So the template I used for the ethic group question is that used by the ONS. There are lots of different options out there for such questions and all at to some extent contentious. Given this I figured that going with the one used by the ONS couldn't be too bad a shout.

Thanks for filling the survey out.

Sandy

In reply to Sandman:


Hi Sandy, forgive my curiosity but how will you deal with the question of any bias that may arise in your analysis through the self-selecting nature of your survey method?

It strikes me that those people who are interested enough to complete the survey might be unrepresentative of the population as a whole. It's perfectly possible that minority groups (e.g. recent immigrants or their descendants) might be more (or less) motivated to complete the survey and that such groups might therefore be over or under-represented in your sample. In other words you might not end up measuring the ethnic minority participation in climbing at all, but end up instead measuring ethnic minority participation in surveys like this, within the wider climbing population. How do you account for that possibility?

In reply to Andy Morley:

IMO ethnic minority groups are so rare in (UK) climbing that he'll do well to find enough of them to make it unrepresentative.

In reply to Sandman:

Started doing it, but stopped because I haven't a clue what is meant by BME!?

In reply to Sandman:

I have never been climbing in UK. But I am interested in it. I am an accountant by profession and I am really interested in adventures. You can contact me anytime at info@excellenceaccounting.com

Also for any accounting help http://www.excellenceaccounting.com/ ................ lol

In reply to Michael Gordon:


No matter how large or small a particular subset of a particular population, it should be possible to measure what percentage they make up, if proper sampling methods are used. If for example you stood at a selection of crags and/ or climbing walls that only had one way in and out for one weekend every month for six months and counted climbers by some easy-to-recognise attribute to do with their ethnicity, you might be able to come up with a fair estimate that would prove or disprove your assertion with a measurable amount of confidence. But how to do that measuring is the problem - the Devil is definitely in the detail here.

In reply to Trangia:




Black and minority ethnic

In reply to Andy Morley:

Hi Andy,

So the purpose of the survey isn't to determine rates of participation as such. For actual participation rates I'm relying on data from the British Climbing Wall Survey and the BMC's Equity Surveys (although I acknowledge that these studies themselves may have biases). What I'm looking for here is more of a sense what the climbing community thinks of a range of potential barriers to participation. So how important they think certain barriers may be. In the second stage of the study I'll be conducting in depth interviews with individuals from Black and Minority Ethnic groups who have either climbed previously or wanted to climb but have not yet tried. I'll be asking at this stage what interviewees think about participation rates and potential reasons for not participating.

I understand that with a self selecting survey such as this there is still the issue that certain groups may be more or less likely to complete this survey than others and thus bias the results. I'm hoping that I'll be able to compare the demographic info from this survey with the UKC user surveys to see if there are differences or similarities between the two respondent profiles. At least I'll hopefully be able to knowledge if the results are likely to be skewed.

Thanks for the question, I hope that helps.

Sandy

In reply to Sandman:

That being the case, I have to say that I'm quite impressed.
(Though whether I'll still be impressed after I've completed it remains to be seen )

In reply to Sandman:

Good luck with it. I completed it but I'm afraid I had little to say of any value since most of the questions would have required me to speculate wildly had you not included a don't know option.
jk

In reply to Sandman:

Apologies but I started and then stopped for a key reason.

I am not in any kind of position to speculate as to the level of importance a Black or Ethnic Minority MAY give to a perceived barrier to participation. It would be purely guesswork and would have no statistical relevance whatsoever.

I'm not about to guess on behalf on an entire ethnic group.

In reply to Andy Morley:

Thanks Andy. Hopefully you'll not find it too bad

In reply to jkarran:

Hi jk,

There should have been a 'don't know' option for each question as I obviously didn't want to force people into answers. From feedback so far though it seems that if you're completing is on a phone or some tablets all options are not visible unless you go into landscape view. Not something I considered at all at the outset so apologies!

Thanks,

Sandy

In reply to Sandman:


What puzzles me is that the structure of the survey with its Likert scales would seem to lend itself to statistical analysis rather than a qualitative evaluation whereas your description of your methodology made it sound more like a qualitative study. If you're using mixed methods I'd be interested in knowing more about how that will work.

In reply to Sandman:

There was a 'don't know' option, my point was only really that I had to make very extensive use of it as I don't feel qualified to speak for anyone but myself in answer to a lot of your questions. Perhaps that's an ok result for you.
jk

In reply to Andy Morley:

Hi Andy,

Yes I plan on using mixed methods. The idea is that the quantitative data in this section can be used to help inform the interviews that I'll do later on. Also so far I've got some great data in the open text section which will be great to this end and lend itself really well to qualitative analysis.

I think it will be interesting to see if some of the themes that respondents to this survey thought were important/unimportant are also brought up by interviewees later on. With the interviews (which will be open ended/semi structured) I'll be doing a discourse analysis on the transcripts to see if the themes that are brought up by interviewees are similar or different to the themes presented in this survey (which itself is informed by literature on sports participation).

This is my first research project so it might not be methodologically bombproof (to say the least) but I'm still working on many some of the details. Thanks for the questions!

Sandy

In reply to jkarran:

Ah I see. I did think that people may use the don't know option often but the alternative to this was forcing people into answers/increasing drop out rates. So far it's not been used more than I would have thought but even if it had, that would have been interesting in itself.

Thanks,

Sandy

In reply to Sandman:

It might be worth searching back through old threads on here - it's not exactly a new topic (as i'm sure you know) but there have been several debates here in the past and in amongst the usual forum tosh, there have been some interesting discussions and links

In reply to Sandman:

I found the range of possible answers under 'How long have you climbed for' a bit focused on breaking down the short term, while lumping all experience above 5 years together, when the range of experience here can vary enormously. More so than ' less than 6 months' V 'less than 1 year'.

In reply to Sandman:
Good survey: easy to complete but still allows capture of qualitative data. Good luck!

In reply to toad:

Hi there,

I definitely plan to have a good look through the previous threads too. Thanks for the heads up!

Sandy

In reply to Jon Stewart:

Thanks Jon!

In reply to AlanLittle:

I would agree, you can use the acronym later in the paper once you have given its full descriptor after the first usage ?

In reply to Sandman:

So...


So was that needed there? 😆

In reply to pebbles:

Thanks. Now done survey

In reply to Sandman:

Out of interest, what's the subject of your degree and, if you don't mind saying, at which uni are you doing it?

In reply to Sandman:

Completed your survey - hope it goes well.

As per my comment in the box half way through, for some of the questions you really need to be part of the BME community (or talk to friends who are) to understand what the barriers are. I agree they exist. Don't know if they are real or just perceived. Perhaps the best answers would come from non-white people who don't climb, particularly if they've chosen another sport instead. But you won't contact them on here I guess.

Martin

In reply to Andy Morley:

Hi Andy,

My degree subject is in Social Policy and Sociology and it's at Edinburgh Uni.

Thanks,

Sandy

In reply to Martin Hore:

Hi Martin,

Thanks for your reply. You're right the best answers for my overall research question will come from non-white non climbers, or at least those who have only briefly tried climbing but no longer participate. It is these groups that I'll be targeting in my interviews later on. I'm gathering these survey responses mainly get a sense of how the 'climbing scene' perceives the issue. It'll be interesting to see similarities and differences between the results of the survey and the interview.

Thanks,

Sandy

In reply to Flinticus:

Hi there,

Thanks for your post. I agree with your criticism actually, what I was trying to get out of that question was the extent to which people were familiar with the climbing scene so it definitely would have been useful to include a question about experience too. This is something I'll reflect on for sure during the write up.

Thanks,

Sandy

In reply to Rampikino:



My sentiments exactly. Asking, what will mostly be white British people, about why THEY think BME groups may be unrepresented in climbing is pretty ridiculous.

In reply to jkarran:


I was the same. Don't have any data really, and didn't think the purpose was to guess.

In reply to Rachel Slater:

Not if the purpose of asking them is to find out what they (the majority) think is the problem and compare it to what the minority say is the actual problem. Comparing perceptions could provide an interesting solution.

In reply to Sandman:

So I just wanted to thank everyone who has taken part for taking the time to help out with this. The response has been beyond what I thought I might get so that's excellent. The comments in the open text part of the actual survey have been particularly useful!

Thanks again!

Sandy

In reply to Sandman:

Hi there,

I am a masters student researching climbing motivations within the climbing community. I am interested in whether climbing ability, confidence, sensation seeking affect how a person is motivated.

My study is an online survey which typically takes 10 minutes to complete. Would you be able to participate in my research? I am looking for people are all climbing levels.

I am very happy to participate in your survey!

In reply to beckyhaslam:

Hi There,

If you PM me the link I'd be happy to participate.

Thanks,

Sandy

In reply to Sandman:

An interesting companion survey would look at the paths that climbers have taken to the activity. Possibly part of the 'problem' facing BMEs may lie in the restrictive / selective nature of these paths, i.e. urban v rural, economic, school / uni, family etc.

In reply to Flinticus:

Hi Flinticus,

That's actually an excellent idea. If I can figure out how to work it into/have the time to work it into my project I certainly will.

Thanks for the suggestion!

Sandy