As of November 30, 2009, the online survey had been running for approximately six weeks, allowing the collection of 281 responses from the community. While this is by no means a description of the whole community of more than 45,000 members, it does begin to give some insight into who is out there.
Survey respondents ranged from 13 to 62 years of age with most participants being in their early to mid-twenties. Close to eighty-five percent of the community respondents were males. Seventy-five percent of respondents identified themselves as Caucasian. All other racial/ethnic groups were represented by less than 1% of respondents. Interestingly, about 74% of respondents indicated that they were the only person in their household to participate in the marine aquarium hobby. Finally, respondents resided in 43 of the 50 United States, with California, Florida, and New York being the areas that most respondents came from. Participants also responded from Canada, England, Hong Kong, Jordan, Mexico, Australia, and the United Kingdom.
Overall, participants indicated that they enjoyed the experience on the forums and that it helped them in their experiencing of the marine aquarium keeping hobby. Some responses included:
Oct 30, 2009 10:42 AM
Without the forums, I wouldn’t be involved in this wonderful hobby.
Nov 1, 2009 12:32 AM
We should have more forums available free to public about everything....
Nov 2, 2009 6:57 PM
I like that it is a diverse community - unlimited by distance, time, race, or background and
people are open to giving help to those new to the hobby.
There were also those who decided to use their comment space to indicate some of the other aspects of the forum:
Nov 10, 2009 2:21 PM
People repeat questions too often. Use the search function!
Oct 30, 2009 10:08 AM
forums are an interesting thing. there is alot of good info to be had but there is also a lot of
bullsh*t to wade through. i appreciate the info that is out there but wish everyone could
behave themself. /rant
**Original Post**
Hey there everyone,
I am writing a paper in graduate school about the marine aquarium hobby and need your help! I want to get an idea of who is using the forums and how you are using the forums. There are so many great people on here that I would love to get a bigger picture of who all of us are. So if you have 10 minutes (or even less, its quick!), please follow the link to take my survey of forum users. It is totally anonymous - the only information I have to uniquely identify "who" gave an answer is a time stamp. It isn't connected to your user name or any other information. This is completely voluntary, and I would love you help in keeping the thread alive so that lots of people take the survey. With over 40,000 registered users, I think we could get 1,000 people to respond don't you? Anyway, if you are feeling like helping out a fellow reefer, please take the survey. I'll post some results online here so that you can all see the diversity of your fellow hobbyists.
http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?hl...vb25rcXk3UFE6MA
Thank you so much for reading, participating, and your time!
H&Wnano
And since I've received so many questions about it - yes, I'm going to post the "in-progress" results in about another month, but the survey will remain open during the remainder of the time I am in the class (at least one more quarter, so March-ish) so that I can try to give people who aren't on the forums much a chance to check out what is going on and respond.
Thank you to everyone who is working to help this project out by participating and linking the survey in signatures and everything like that. Just goes to show how awesome this community is!
Best to you all.
good luck.
