UKC

Please can you help UKC by filling out our User Survey. In return you'll be entered into our prize draw, which includes a whole host of amazing products!!

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In the traditional spirit of questionnaire surveys on UKC, for the question about foreign trips, I suggest you need an option between 'once a year' and 'never'.

Thanks for the feedback, that was added this afternoon.

To add to my responses in the Rockfax section - I think the quality of Rockfax guidebooks generally sits somewhere between good and excellent, but there's been at least one absolute shocker published with multiple clearly incorrect route descriptions or topos, almost as if the guidebook writer was writing from second-hand information.

Also, an option for people who climb outside once a week, but not at the weekend 😉

Once again the influence of the grey (climbers’ ) pound overlooked

Hi - could you add an option to specify which apps you use other than those listed.

When you click on "other" no box appears to specify as requested.

thanks

Completed.

Too late to change now I expect, but as I buy kit relatively infrequently limiting responses to the last 12 months is not helpful. I would give a completely different range of suppliers, manufacturers etc for each of the previous years. Also, I can't easily remember what I bought when! Probably "in the last 5 years" would have given more accurate answers. Then, I could just have thought about my current kit and responded accordingly. 

I put income before tax - after tax I'm in the next lower bracket. Is that what you meant?

For my climbing/mountaineering activities I limited my response to what I do regularly now, in my seventies. Including my experience over 50 years would have resulted in a much longer list!

Martin

Hilleberg and Skoda missing from the kit list?

Also Decathlon and non-specialists like M&S for (e.g.,) base-layers (you can go climbing without investing massive amounts in 'specialist' - aka expensive - clothing).

The areas of England to chose from for your location are interesting!

Also Peter Storm.

Also charity shops (various)

Yes, Cumbria has gone and we live in Westmorland now

This looks to be working fine here. Is there a county missing?

What Web Browser are you using please? The input box shows after clicking Other for me.

but Simond (owned by Decathlon) is listed. Many non UK brands missing, were Millet or Odlo on the list ?

The list isn't supposed to include all brands in fact we heavily pruned it from the previous surveys since it had become too long and unwieldy. The list is very much for our benefit since it targets the brands that are most relevant to us as a business. Apologies if your favourite isn't included.

Alan

Good survey.

I was surprised Wedge Climbing wasn't listed among the Youtube climbing channels. Personally I rate it as the current best channel.

Hi - Chrome.  It was the first question about apps - logging indoor climbs i think.  I can't get back in to the survey to check

In among counties were crags and some gibberish when I filled it in. I can't go back now, of course. This was in Chrome.

Yes, Cumbria has gone and we live in Westmorland now

I realise I'm chancing sounding like a pedantic t*t, but we still live in Cumbria, just under Westmorland council. 

You mean Westmorland and Furness

I do. 

Very British but don't like being asked about my salary - should be an option for "Prefer not to say".

I realise you can't include every brand but I was surprised that:

a) This was one of the few questions not to include an "other" category for us to fill in ourselves and

b) Smaller independent UK brands were almost entirely absent. This year, I have bought from Ash Climbing, Beacon, Core, Hardwood Holds, Silly Goat, Strongholds and Taylor Made Holds. I think it is a shame that none of these brands will be represented in your results given that the UK has such a vibrant culture of independent climbing brands.

I expect Wedge will be well represented among the "Other" entries.

Same on Safari. Options like Fallen Tree Boulder and Taxi Zawn come up under county. 

There wasn't an option for people like me who climbed for nearly thirty years, stopped, started again and then stopped again after piling on lockdown blubber. I demand to be represented!

Quite right. This a  blatantly commercial exercise and asking about revenue is quite shocking. Be interested to know how many reply and what percent of its readership UKC reckons it represents. 

Well UKC/Rockfax is a business, so… yeah. Shouldn’t really come as a surprise. 

I get enough value from the site to be happy to help with this sort of market research. The advertising on here never feels intrusive and certainly preferable to a subscription model of funding. 

Question 3 is odd - options are "more than twice a week" then "just at weekends". I tend to go twice a week, one evening and one day at the weekend. What answer should I give?

How should those not working due to ill health, or simply by choice (eg F/T parents) rely to the question on employment status? 

No you don't 😉, Cumbria still exists as a county, Cumberland, and Westmorland & Furness are unitary authorities that replaced Cumbria County Council and its district councils.

we lived in the Peak District before, I bet we should have lived in Derbyshire 😂

Could be worse, we have to tell people we live in the Outer Lake District..

Is it any different to the 74 changes that created Cumbria? Obviously previously Cumberland, Westmorland and Furness was in Lancashire. The idea that Bolton, Blackpool and Blackburn are not in Lancashire is a bit silly, but post 74 they are administratively separate, same applies to Broughton. Cumbria has only ever been an administrative creation, which has now been deemed surplus to requirements.

As I understand it Cumbria remains as a ceremonial county, with the same boundaries. Six administrative districts have been replaced with two, and the overarching county council removed.

No one round here thinks we now live in Cumberland, (as it's not the same area covered by the old county), and never said they lived in Allerdale prior to that.

Cumbria? Westmorland? What are you talking about? Everyone knows that everything north of the Humber and Mersey is part of the kingdom of Northumbria.

organisation memberships - I've had to put National Trust even though The national trust for Scotland is a totally separate organisation. Maybe needs adding for future respondents

Read the form again, it goes under "other".

I would commend people to join it, as it is cheaper, you get reciprocal rights and it means not having to give money to the NT, which is win win win. 😘

I did think the options for clubs poor, The Wayfarers is a senior club and MAM is a bit more than a regional. Maybe the list of clubs tells us something of the list compiler 🤷

I can't fill out this whole survey because questions 3, 4, 5, and 12 ask for impossible generalisations. Life is much more variable than the survey assumes - it varies from year to year as other things often have to take a priority over climbing. Each year could be any one of the five possibilities. In question 1, there should also be the option of 'No longer climbing'. Finally, I find it a bit sad that, very weirdly (deliberately so?), Trad climbing - surely still the most popular kind of climbing in the UK? - is put at the very bottom of a 12-item list in question 2.

Presumably that’s part of the reason why the survey is run every year.

I’ve already done the survey so can’t look, but is it just listed alphabetically? 

No, it was not alphabetical. 

It's the way it is to make it easier to fill out (by not having a million answers to choose from) and ultimately process the data.

Good point, noted for next time.

There's a few questions that have randomised multiple choice answers to stop them being biased towards the first couple of answers and then people moving onto the next question. Trad is still the most popular BTW.

Will we get to see some of the stats coming out of this survey ??

Yeah, sure. We'll post results when it's finished. The 2020 results is only available in PDF format

• 2020: https://advertising.ukclimbing.com/UKC_UKH_Survey.pdf
• 2017: https://www.ukclimbing.com/articles/surveys/ukcukh_forums_-_user_interactio...
• 2013: https://www.ukclimbing.com/articles/surveys/ukc_readership_survey_results-5...

Fascinating - those instances of 'prefer not to say' - given that it's all anonymous. I suppose I did feel a twinge of tortoise-shyness at selecting one of the lowest wage categories, but note otherwise that any wage bracket is meaningless without further knowledge. By which, I'm surprised that UKC hasn't probed a little further towards disposable income - questions towards home ownership and mortgage commitment ??

Maybe UKC can in any case better predict spending habits based on age range, but then wage bracket would not necessarily correlate ...