research questionnaires for all AFF students and Instructors

[Nick11 0]

Hi all! i am attempting to identify any patterns in anxiety amongst AFF students as well as explain certain personality traits in participants of the sport as part of an independent study.

Now heres the problem, because of the typical british summer weather i haven't managed to get enough data! and might have realised my methodology was the wrong way to approach this too.

So i need a helping hand. The Competitive State Anxiety Inventory is really only effective right before a jump. but that isn't going to be possible. so if your interested take a read of the information consent form and try and recall how you felt at what ever level you may be at or your most memorable level.

instructors who are interested. if you could fill out the competitive state anxiety inventory by recalling how you feel the morning of teaching or jumping with students and state that you are instructors where it says 'level'.

also don't forget to fill out international personality item pool and sensation seeking. your results will remain fully confidential and remember this is only voluntary but your help will be most appreciated!

cheers, Nick.

[BIGUN 1,323]

Quote

Hi all! i am attempting to identify any patterns in anxiety amongst AFF students as well as explain certain personality traits in participants of the sport as part of an independent study.

Now heres the problem, because of the typical british summer weather i haven't managed to get enough data! and might have realised my methodology was the wrong way to approach this too.

So i need a helping hand. The Competitive State Anxiety Inventory is really only effective right before a jump. but that isn't going to be possible. so if your interested take a read of the information consent form and try and recall how you felt at what ever level you may be at or your most memorable level.

instructors who are interested. if you could fill out the competitive state anxiety inventory by recalling how you feel the morning of teaching or jumping with students and state that you are instructors where it says 'level'.

also don't forget to fill out international personality item pool and sensation seeking. your results will remain fully confidential and remember this is only voluntary but your help will be most appreciated!

cheers, Nick.

Nick,

If it's only effective right before a jump and you're now asking for a recall method; won't that skew the results - significantly?

Nobody has time to listen; because they're desperately chasing the need of being heard.

[JohnRich 4]

When you get to writing up your report, please pay more attention to your capitalization.

[RMK 3]

There is far too much selection bias among the participant pool to yield any meaningful results. In these common web-forum exercises, you are trying to capture feedback among skydivers, but it is narrowed to:

- skydivers who frequent skydiving web forums
- skydivers who take part in web surveys
- skydivers who bothered to even read the thread
- skydivers who even know about this site (most students may never have even heard of this site; I myself was jumping 5 years before bothering to have a look here)

I had a quick glance at the docs and the personality questionnaire seems to be a derivative of the Myers-Briggs tests, but it’s so abbreviated (of course to have people not lose interest and finish it) that it’s of little use. I would like to help someone out, but when you see the research as flawed or unable to accurately measure due to the methodology, then it really seems a waste of time.

About every 90 days someone comes on here (and virtually every other “extreme” sports web forum) with a survey to understand what makes us tick. However in 10 years of skydiving, I’ve never once been approached by someone at a dropzone to ask me “Excuse me, I doing a study ...”

You noted the weather has not been good. All the better for your study; the skydivers are sitting around with spare time. Doing it poorly is wasting your time; if you are making the effort to do a study, at least do it well (as opposed to just please your professor/teacher). Get out to the DZ with a clip board or iPad and get some real data.

"Pain is the best instructor, but no one wants to attend his classes"

[jimjumper 25]

I doubt you'll get enough respose from an on-line survey to get any significant results. I did one for D. Fishman in 1985 and a second for Cal State Northridge University in 1988 for L.M. Walker-Finney and about every year someone with an interst in skydiving thinks it would be a grat idea for a thesis. The Cal State study cited studies by Deci (1975), Lefcourt (1976), Phares (1976), and Rotter (1966 and 1972) so these studies are nothing new. It might be more revealing for someone to research all the studies that have already been done with an aim towards combining all the research and surveys into something comprehensive.