From: SHERMAN%TRLN.DECnet@uncvx1.acs.unc.EDU ("Dennis R. Sherman")
Newsgroups: rec.org.sca
Subject: How Active is Active -- RESULTS
Date: 16 Apr 92 13:40:00 GMT
Organization: The Internet

Here are the results of the "How Active is Active" survey.  I was quite
pleased with the response - 45 people responded, and all within about 4
days.  At least one person responded from AnTir, Atlantia, Caid, Calontir,
East, Meridies, Middle, Trimaris, and West kingdoms.  A wide range of
years in the SCA are included, with a low of less than one year, and a
high of 26. (yup, 26, almost 27 :-)

Some caveats about these results:  this was a ***very*** informal survey.
Don't trust any of these numbers as being exact for anything.  I think
we can get a sense of varying perceptions, but nothing more exacting.
I had to manipulate the data a bit - lots of people sent me ranges 
instead of single numbers (i.e. events/month = 2 to 4) which I made into
single numbers (i.e. 3).  I'm sure this doesn't help absolute accuracy :-)
I don't even trust this data enough to spend a lot of time checking 
standard deviation, and such.  But it is interesting, and kind
of neat to see what other people in other places think.

A few other comments before the data.  Quite a number of people made
comments when counting up how many activities they attend a month to
the effect of "I didn't know I was doing so much!"  The questions of
average number of events per month and average number of events per
year weren't exactly redundant - lots of people count them up differently,
with Pennsic, for example, not figuring into the monthly average.  To
clarify a couple of questions, by 'events' I meant tourneys and feasts,
and 'activities' I meant things you attend that are scheduled but not
tourneys and feasts, i.e. practices, meetings, workshops, etc.  As far
as I can tell, everyone answered those questions appropriately, even
when they added comments saying they hope they did it correctly.

Number of people saying their activity level was
Fringe: 	 6
Moderate:	13
Mod/Very:	 4
Very:		22

So, I think we can safely say this survey did to some extent self-select
for people who are active... :-)

Activity	Events per Month   Events per Year	Activities per Month
Level		Avg.  High  Low    Avg.  High  Low	Avg.  High  Low

Fringe		0.17   0.5 0.0	    2.28    6    0	 0.25   1.5   0
Moderate        1.17   2.5 0.5	   12.38   30    6	 6.15  15     1
Mod/Very	1.5    2   1.0	   11.75   20    8	 6.5   11     1
Very		1.8    4.5 0.2	   19.72   55    3	11.74  29     3.5

I don't think I have enough data points for any attempt at analysis by
Kingdom to be worthwhile, so I'm not going to try.

People's perception of whether they live in a center of a kingdom or not
does seem to have a relationship to the number of activities in which they
participate.  

Activity 	center of	Median #	Median #
Level		kingdom Y/N	Events/Year	Activities/Month

Fringe		Y		 3.1		 0.25
		N		 1.75		 0
Moderate	Y		15		 0.5
		N		 9.5		 5
Mod/Very	insufficient data to make an assessment		
Very		Y		27.5		11
		N		15		10

and it would appear that people who do not perceive themselves as living
in a center of a kingdom tend to participate in a greater number of local
activities than those that do live in a kingdom center.  Not a big surprise,
but kind of neat to have it show up in the numbers, especially among the
people who consider their activity level to be Moderate.

I'll keep the data around for a while if someone thinks of an analysis
they'd like to see on it, but I won't add any more data to what I have
now - don't send me any more!!!

Thanks for sending stuff in - this was interesting.

*------------------------------------------------------------------------*
* Robyyan Torr d'Elandris   Kapellenberg, Windmaster's Hill    Atlantia	 *
*------------------------------------------------------------------------*
* Dennis R. Sherman  	             Triangle Research Libraries Network *
* dennis_sherman@unc.edu           Univ. of North Carolina - Chapel Hill *
*------------------------------------------------------------------------*