by higg » Tue Nov 16, 2010 12:24 am
The notes below are a summary of the answers from the second half of the club survey. (The graphs from the first half are published further up this post.)
In total, there were 113 responses to the survey, which is about 40% of the membership. Thanks to everyone for their support, to everyone who responded and to those who helped to compile the results. I think this serves as a good record of where we are as a club and gives some ideas of things we can do in the future.
Aodan.
=======================================================
Explanation of how the results for this section were compiled.
Condensing a large number of text answers into a few thoughts is never an exact science so this is how we went about it.
• The survey sheets were divided among 7 people from different parts of the club to give a broad range of backgrounds.
• Each person picked out the amount of times various ideas were mentioned in the forms,
• The scores for each of the ideas were then totted up and compiled.
The results are not exact because some people may have mentioned 2 or 3 items for a particular question and others may have mentioned only one item. By and large though, some ideas did show consistently among a significant proportion of the survey returns.
A summary of the findings are given below:
Why did you join ?
Three items showed highest among the reasons to join the club
• Friendly people
• to increase fitness/ become a better cyclist
• ride with others
Next were
• A good club run (20% of these specifically mentioned the different speed groups)
• Recommendations by family/friends
• a desire to take up competitive cycling
• local club
There was also lesser mentions of the website and the MTB rides
What does the club do well ?
• The club run stood clearly with many more mentions than the next item which was riding in a friendly and social group.
• People also like the fact that the club caters for all abilities, organises events (including the club TTs) and promotes racing well.
• The web forum and the ability to attract members were also mentioned numerous times
The following answers might appear negative but please bear in mind that the question asked for specific things that people don't like about the club, they do not necessarily mean people don't like the club.
What do you not like about the club ?
The most encouraging fact from this question was that some people specifically said there was nothing they don't like about the club and many others left the answer blank. 11% of the survey returns fall under this category.
However these the items that people don't like:
• A quarter of the survey returns didn't like that the club run always uses the same route.
• 11% of the returns mentioned that they didn't like the slagging and bickering on the web forum.
• The club run organisation also got some mention but under various headings, (poor communication, poor standard of riding, ride back form cafe disorderly, people not listening to VC's). In total 13% of returns mentioned one of these items.
• Some other items got a minor number of mentions. The following fell into this category; Committee and VC politics, the club is too large and club kit
• There are a number of other items which only got 2 mentions are less.
What else would you like to see the club do ?
There were many varied and different ideas mentioned here making it hard to summarise into a few points.
There were a number of ideas offered about how the club could arrange its organised rides. 12% of people like the idea of different routes for the club run. Similarly, many people asked for club runs on Sundays as well as midweek. Many people asked for MTB rides.
Away from the club rides there was also a call for:
• training/coaching days.
• the club to organise a sportive
• encourage youth cycling
• encourage more women to cycle
• more socials
• annual trip away
• get more involved in charity /community
• people volunteering to help
• new kit
• provide newsletter