Trail centre rider survey
We want your views on MTB trail centres!
https://hull.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/trailcentreridersurvey
We are academic staff working at the University of Hull, and are also keen riders ourselves. This survey is part of a University-funded research project looking at how trail centres are designed and used; results will be fed-back to trail centres to help them improve what they offer. We are surveying riders to get their opinions on trail centres, as well as interviewing centre managers and trail builders.
We are very interested in your thoughts and opinions. Please use the open text boxes to tell us about what you think is important. The survey is anonymous - we will not be able to identify you. You do not have to answer any questions which you do not want to, and you are free to withdraw from the survey at any point.
We plan to use the information we collect to write a report for trail centre managers, and will also write academic papers. By completing the survey you agree that your answers can be used in this way.
Many thanks
Lewis Holloway (l.holloway@hull.ac.uk) and David Gibbs (d.c.gibbs@hull.ac.uk)
Geography, School of Environmental Sciences, University of Hull
The survey is available from the url above and also here
One of the great universities! Oxford, Cambridge... Hull
Oxford's a complete dump!
Done.
One of the great universities! Oxford, Cambridge… Hull
Straight in with the academic snobbery. 🙁
Having said that, had a go at filling it in but felt that the questions were a little too broad and you might struggle to get meaningful answers to quite a few of them. eg What do you like about Blue/Red/Black trails? You might have got further by getting riders to agree/disagree with statements rather than provide random opinions on why trail centres have got so popular.
And Cambridge is full of buggertoryboys. Just saying like. Go Hull!
Straight in with the academic snobbery.
Done. Made me realise how much little non trail centre riding I actually do!
Done
Thanks for that - all feedback useful and we can tweak the questions for future versions!
Confirmed how little trail centre riding (effectively none) I do. I think I may be a statistical outlier 🙂
Done
I was completing but then got bored of all the very open ended questions.
Feel sorry for the person who has to try and interpret all the answers coming out of it.
More importantly is the urban myth still circulating about Sarah Green shagging all the rugby team on the snooker table still going about?
Done, didn't think the questions were too bad.
Done. Did think it was a bit open ended, it will be hard to interpret the data.
Again, thanks for all the responses. Sorry if it's a bit difficult to complete, we did test drive it! I can't comment on Sarah Green, before my time...
Done.
Useful survey - let us know where it goes / of what use.
Done.
Done. Problem with open-ended questions: you have ta fink.
Having run a few surveys before (and been involved in analysis of surveys with over 200,000 responses) you will find that most of those questions lead to nothing as the data will be all over the place. As others have said you need to almost prescribe answers (but with commentary alongside) so you can group and further analyse.
Even use machine learning didn't really help as it is hard to interpret completely free form text.
Having to refine the questions and then rerun survey is just wasted time. Unless of course you are not expecting many people to complete the survey and you have a lot of time on your hands ?
We'll produce a summary of the results and post a link when we're done - survey open until end May, so will be a few weeks yet. Thanks for the points about the responses - we've done surveys before as well and have analysed this type of open ended questions through coding - yes it takes more time, but you get a fuller picture than just closed questions. We're also interviewing trail centre managers, rangers, trail builders etc so we're not just relying on the survey. Pleased through that we've got people thinking and helping us!
Done.
Answering the questions is easy enough. God help the person data mining to find trends when you have all sorts of different spellings of things.
You'd be better off with selectable options like the trail centres just list them out there's only a finite amount.
What's the definition of a trail centre nowadays?
Presumably it's not just the presence of man-fettled 'official trails' as places such as the Surrey Hills that have trails of that nature (Barry Knows Best, Summer Lightning), or Woburn Sands (Longslade Trail) would qualify and that doesn't seem right. Also the presence of 'facilities' can't be it as there are places that I would say definitely are trail centres that don't have any (eg. Brechfa, Cli-machX).
Done
What’s the definition of a trail centre nowadays?
Marked loops on would be my definition.
Marked loops on would be my definition.
Antur Stiniog?
Antur Stiniog?
He didn't say you had to be under your own power for the whole of the loop!
That's as good a definition as any I suppose but it would still make Woburn Sands a trail centre which I would struggle with.
Antur Stiniog?
Damn, I forgot to include that one, but done.
Done.
Agree – some questions not specific enough.
Marked loops on would be my definition.
What about badly marked loops?
Does the West Highland Way classify as a trail centre?
Surely one of the points of the survey is that the concept of a trail centre is a vague one. I'm guessing they wanted to see how different people view them, hence the open ended questions.
