DPS MEMBERSHIP SURVEY RESULTS
Karen Leonard |
At the February
4 potluck, and at the March meeting as well, members of the DPS filled out a
questionnaire somewhat frivolously put together by a curious member of the
Management Committee. The analysis of the questionnaires provides some
interesting information about the members of the section, at least those who
attend meetings, and perhaps some guidelines for policy decisions in future.
Since the survey was not sent to the total membership, it has no statistical
validity and the analysis below is not particularly rigorous; I did do a
breakdown by sex on some of the questions, however.
Nineteen of the
forty-one respondents were female and twenty-two were male. Twenty-seven
respondents were emblem-holders (66%), and eight of these had finished the list
(20%). These respondents reflect years of hiking experiences. Two started
hiking with the DPS in the 1950's, eight in the 1960's, ten in the 1970's, and
nineteen in the 1980's. It is heartening that so many who have been hiking for
decades and earned their emblems and list finishing pins continue to be active
DPS members! And these facts also testify to a great deal of shared
experience--66% of the respondents have hiked most of the 7 emblem peaks, so
more than half our active members can trade stories about their climbs of these
key peaks.
The tables below show the years it took to achieve these
distinctions. The average time to emblem was 3 1/3 years (although if you
remove the outlyer it comes down to 2 1/2 years) and the average time to finish
the list was 9 4/7 years. The breakdown by sex shows that while there is no
difference in length of time to get the emblem between men and women, there is
a difference when it comes to finishing the list. |
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We asked about
membership in other sections, and not surprisingly most DPS respondents were
also members of the HPS and/or SPS. Only seven people were not members of other
sections (or did not respond to this question). Table III shows the
distribution. |
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From this, we
see that 25 of the 34 respondents to this question also belong to the HPS and
26 also belong to the SPS; only 3 also belong to the RCS. All three RCS members
were men; more men than women were also members only of the HPS. While more
women then men were also members only of the SPS. |
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