Survey Results 2015
How to fill an ocean in a cup? 50 survey questions in English, German and Russian were answered by 727 participants of WAG 2015 creating an incredibly huge amount of data. First our big thanks to everyone for taking the 20 minutes in average to reply to the online survey. It gives so much food for thought even if not yet for immediate changes.
Where to start? Maybe with a small detail: 18 percent of foreign participants checked "Having ties to Germany" as one of the possible answers about their motivation to operate in WAG. Hopefully the contacts with so many German hams can bring up and refresh some of the hopefully mostly good emotions and memories. It is a real reward that a contest can add to this - besides all our craziness, QRM, logs and figures.
The hard figures show a response rate of 40 percent amongst German participants, 24 percent amongst Russian speaking participants and 10 percent for the rest of the world answering in English. The German and Russian groups are nearly representative in core characteristics to the respective logsets while the English speaking respondents are up against average in operation time and QSO numbers.
The competetive motivated group of participants can roughly make up for a fifth of all participants. For Germans one motive stands out clearly: "Enjoy nice runs runs being sought after for at least one time" was checked by two thirds of the respondents. Even competetive minded contesters are giving in to this joy and neglecting the hunt for multipliers somewhat time after time.
The paddling third
I will not empty now the full can of numbers on you in text but better mention only a few points leaving you the full results via the clear graphs and the full set of freetext comments in the downloadable files.
So here are some basic and some for us surprising results:
More than a quarter of German and Russian participants use only paddles for sending CW and more than a third of them use one antenna for all bands. It is about the same number favouring a potential basic category "One fixed antenna lower than 12m". About a third operates completely unassisted even if there is no such category. 60 to 72 percent of participants download the pdf award and many thoughts were delivered about incentives of all kind making us curious and headscratching at the same time (see files with freetext comments).
"Meine Daten gehören mir - my data are mine"?
One of the most striking differences between German and foreign participants showed up about the question of publication: 68 percent of foreigners support the publication of all logs other than checklogs – German support stopped short of 50 percent. Also 26 percent of German respondetns explicitely said "NO" to open logs while an explicit "NO" came only from 5 resp. 11 percent of English and Russian spealing subgroups. The same gap exists about publication of the UBN reports mentioning the individual errors: More than 40 percent of foreigners wish them to be published while the respective figure for Germans only reach 11 percent.
Similar big is the gap about introducing a SSB-only-category being much more favoured by Germans while the foreign outcome seemingly reflects the wish to generate as many contacts as possible from the available German stations being the only counterparts in this single-country contest.
The files for download
So, if you really has read up to this point it is time for you to jump into the ocean and dive into the figures by yourself. We have Powerpoint files with the graphs and Excel (xls) files for the many and interesting freetext comments. The Powerpoints are in pptx as the graphs delivered by the ufb survey tool surveygizmo could not be converted to ppt. If you do not have the necessary Office software we recommend to use a freeware Powerpoint viewer-only (you do not want to morph the files, don't you?). There is also a file Zufa_Umfrage.ppt containing kind of an "executive summary" with comparisons between German and Non-German responses – but only in German. But it may not be difficult to notice its points.
Powerpoint with graphs about Q&As (engl.)
Excel with freetext comments (engl.)
Overview and comparison as ppt in German
Powerpoint with graphs about Q&As (russ.)
Excel with freetext comments (russ.)
The language seperated files contain only the answers of the participants using this language. If you are interested in the German answers, too, check the survay page in german language.
Chris DL8MBS
WAG contest manager