Garden Railway Survey

Anything related to the garden railway world that is not catered for in another board
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ge_rik
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Garden Railway Survey

Post by ge_rik » Wed Jun 20, 2018 5:21 pm

I'm hoping this will work. The first time I've used Google forms, but given the discussions on a few threads recently, I thought this might prove interesting. It's totally anonymous so you can be as honest as you like and create your own nickname if you wish, or put your real name if you are happy to do so.

I thought I would test run it here before releasing it to a wider audience, so any feedback would be appreciated. Bear in mind though that it can't possibly cover every issue, otherwise it would take ages to complete. It took me about 5 minutes to work through my answers. Hopefully, it will eventually enable me to cross reference and or correlate responses.

https://goo.gl/forms/1EvrSKDaln3Rzq9g2

Rik
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Re: Garden Railway Survey

Post by tom_tom_go » Wed Jun 20, 2018 6:22 pm

What's this for Rik?

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Re: Garden Railway Survey

Post by ge_rik » Wed Jun 20, 2018 9:40 pm

tom_tom_go wrote: Wed Jun 20, 2018 6:22 pm What's this for Rik?
Basically, my own and participants' curiosity - the accumulated results are given at the end of the survey, so there's no hidden agenda. If the results throw up anything significant, I'll share the analysis here and on the other forums I frequent. I've not no particular objective in mind, I was just fascinated that on one of the threads, someone had said they were far more interested (eg 90%) in making rather than running trains. I'd assumed that running trains was the prime motivation for venturing out into the garden. But then, what do I know?

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Re: Garden Railway Survey

Post by IanC » Wed Jun 20, 2018 9:54 pm

Rik,

I've given your survey a go. There was a question about gender but the only option it gave me was option 1! Not sure what that makes me? lol. I didn't see any results at the end of the survey either.

Hope it helps your curiosity. Feel free to contact me directly if my answers have confused you. I used the same name as I do on this forum.

Ian
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Re: Garden Railway Survey

Post by ge_rik » Wed Jun 20, 2018 9:55 pm

I've added a couple of questions and a couple of new options based on the feedback received so far. Thanks folks.

Rik
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Re: Garden Railway Survey

Post by ge_rik » Wed Jun 20, 2018 9:57 pm

IanC wrote: Wed Jun 20, 2018 9:54 pm Rik,

I've given your survey a go. There was a question about gender but the only option it gave me was option 1! Not sure what that makes me? lol. I didn't see any results at the end of the survey either.

Hope it helps your curiosity. Feel free to contact me directly if my answers have confused you. I used the same name as I do on this forum.

Ian
Maybe you submitted while I was just editing the questions. You could try again and I'll see if I can delete your previous submission. Sorry, very much avwork in progress.

Rik
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Re: Garden Railway Survey

Post by tom_tom_go » Wed Jun 20, 2018 10:02 pm

The age survey will be an interesting one.

Results can be viewed clicking the link if you don't want to take the survey:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIp ... wanalytics

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Re: Garden Railway Survey

Post by IanC » Wed Jun 20, 2018 10:29 pm

tom_tom_go wrote: Wed Jun 20, 2018 10:02 pm The age survey will be an interesting one.

Results can be viewed clicking the link if you don't want to take the survey:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIp ... wanalytics
Not that disclosing my age bothers me, but most surveys have a "prefer not to say" option. My guess is that the average age will be at the older end of the range. It is on the railway where I'm a volunteer.

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Re: Garden Railway Survey

Post by big-ted » Wed Jun 20, 2018 10:55 pm

Might be interesting to have a 'none currently' option under size of your garden railway for those of us that run our stock on club layouts and those of others. :)

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Re: Garden Railway Survey

Post by ge_rik » Thu Jun 21, 2018 6:51 am

Thanks to the 14 others who have contributed so far. I've followed your suggestions and added a couple more categories but it could get overwhelming so I think that's it for now.

One of the reasons for using Google forms, apart from it being free and having a range of question types, is that links to it can be posted on any forum. I'm now going to put links to it on G Scale Central, the Garden Railway Facebook Group and the 16mm NGM Assoc group.

If anyone frequents other forums or groups then feel free to post links to it on there. Please reassure them that the results are for interest only, no personal data is gathered and so no one will be targeted with advertising or follow up correspondence.

Rik
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Re: Garden Railway Survey

Post by ge_rik » Thu Jun 21, 2018 6:55 am

tom_tom_go wrote: Wed Jun 20, 2018 10:02 pm The age survey will be an interesting one.

Results can be viewed clicking the link if you don't want to take the survey:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIp ... wanalytics
Thanks for that Tom. Be useful to see how the results accumulate. You'll notice I've added a question about forums used bt contributors now I'm opening it out to a wider audience.

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Re: Garden Railway Survey

Post by philipy » Thu Jun 21, 2018 8:09 am

Rik,
For the early contributors, is there any facility for adding the answers to the revised question list?
Philip

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Re: Garden Railway Survey

Post by ge_rik » Thu Jun 21, 2018 11:53 am

philipy wrote: Thu Jun 21, 2018 8:09 am Rik,
For the early contributors, is there any facility for adding the answers to the revised question list?
Hi Philip
You can complete the questionnaire again and leave a note asking for the previous submission ( under whatever name you used) to be removed.

Rik
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Re: Garden Railway Survey

Post by ge_rik » Thu Jun 21, 2018 12:51 pm

ge_rik wrote: Thu Jun 21, 2018 11:53 am
philipy wrote: Thu Jun 21, 2018 8:09 am Rik,
For the early contributors, is there any facility for adding the answers to the revised question list?
Hi Philip
You can complete the questionnaire again and leave a note asking for the previous submission ( under whatever name you used) to be removed.

Rik
As requested, I have now removed a previous submission, so have figured out how it's done. Not worked out how to get labels on the horizontal bar charts, though.

Rik
Last edited by ge_rik on Thu Jun 21, 2018 1:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Garden Railway Survey

Post by ge_rik » Thu Jun 21, 2018 1:01 pm

Ok, finished tweaking it now, so will let it run for a week or so and then try some analysis.

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Re: Garden Railway Survey

Post by tom_tom_go » Thu Jun 21, 2018 10:42 pm

This response made me chuckle:
The growth in obtrusive data protection and cookie questions is prompting me to interact through a VPN
Don't use the Internet if you are that paranoid...

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Re: Garden Railway Survey

Post by ge_rik » Fri Jun 22, 2018 7:32 am

tom_tom_go wrote: Thu Jun 21, 2018 10:42 pm This response made me chuckle:
The growth in obtrusive data protection and cookie questions is prompting me to interact through a VPN
Don't use the Internet if you are that paranoid...
Yes, a bit odd. If he knows how to use a VPN, then presumably he's quite IT-savvy, so does he know something we don't know, is he just being over-cautious or, as you say, is he paranoid? I suppose the fact that the survey is hosted by Google makes some people suspicious. I downloaded Google sheet to enable me to edit the resultant speadsheet on my tablet and cannot figure out why the app needs to know my location.!!.....?

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Re: Garden Railway Survey

Post by tom_tom_go » Fri Jun 22, 2018 8:23 pm

Interesting data so far Rik.

Hardly any young folk and most people have no interest contributing online.

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Re: Garden Railway Survey

Post by ge_rik » Sat Jun 23, 2018 8:25 am

tom_tom_go wrote: Fri Jun 22, 2018 8:23 pm Interesting data so far Rik.
Hardly any young folk and most people have no interest contributing online.
Hi Tom
That does seem strange, given that they must have been alerted to it through a forum or FB group.

I'm going to leave it a few more days, until interest in it starts to wane, and then try some cross reference analysis. For example, if you have an end to end or out and back layout, are you more likely to run trains realistically?

Anything else people might be interested in?

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Re: Garden Railway Survey

Post by philipy » Sat Jun 23, 2018 11:54 am

ge_rik wrote: Sat Jun 23, 2018 8:25 am
tom_tom_go wrote: Fri Jun 22, 2018 8:23 pm Interesting data so far Rik.
Hardly any young folk and most people have no interest contributing online.
That does seem strange, given that they must have been alerted to it through a forum or FB group.
Not sure how strange that is actually? What is the total membership of this forum and how many regular contributors are there? A quick look at the membership list suggests several hundred registered members(Tom?) members and I'd guess that not much more than a dozen or 20 actually say anything?
Plus, when I look around here, I quite often notice that at the bottom it says my name and 2 or 3 guests are browsing, so those people are reading but not contribuing.

Edited to add: I posted this and then noticed at the bottom it says:
"Who is online
Users browsing this forum: philipy and 3 guests" ... I rest my case! :lol:
Philip

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