The demographics of survey respondents.
November 20, 2023 by Jesse Weisz in News with 0 comments
The purpose of this article is to explain the rationale behind the questions we asked in the Ultiworld Disc Golf/StatMando Fandom Survey and the demographics of our survey respondents. This article is part of a series that will be released throughout the offseason.
Our survey, linked here, was divided into several sections:
- Rating Pros: We selected 37 MPO and 20 FPO players and asked the survey respondents, on a 10-point scale, are you rooting for or against them? The professionals were primarily chosen based on their UDisc World Ranking or DGPT Tour Points standing. At the beginning of the survey, 16 of the biggest names in the sport were listed, with the remaining players listed in the final section of the survey. This division was made to increase the chances that respondents would fill out the middle survey sections. In total, 1690 (55.6%) of the 3040 total respondents completed both player sections.
- Player Questions: We asked respondents to choose their favorite players and to guess who will win the most Majors over the next five years.
- Assorted Disc Golf Questions: This section had various questions, such as when respondents started following the sport, how often they play, and which are their favorite courses on tour.
- Disc Golf Media Questions: Respondents rated commentators from DGN and Jomez on a 0-10 scale, told us how closely they follow FPO and MPO, and whether they prefer live or post-produced coverage.
- Discs and Manufacturers Questions: Respondents rated several manufacturers on a 0-10 scale and answered questions such as how many discs they bought in the last 12 months.
- Biographic/Demographic Questions: More information below.
The survey was initially distributed through the Twitter feeds of StatMando and UWDG, and then picked up by other media sources. Here is a graph of the sources of survey respondents:
Birth Year of Survey Respondents
In total, the survey was available for 56 days (8/17/2023 – 10/12/2023). Our hope was to collect data that broadly represented disc golf fans. Nevertheless, our survey results provide a sample from one piece of the disc golf community – individuals that are online, willing to take a survey, and follow one of the media sources that shared a survey link. Moreover, the results of the survey hinge on the assumption that respondents were honest and did not fill out the survey multiple times (we filtered out a few erroneous responses). A breakdown of the survey respondent demographics is presented below. Note that some respondents skipped questions, so we rarely have 3040 responses to a single question.
Birth Year of Survey Respondents
54.8% of survey respondents were millennials, people between the ages of 27 and 42 in 2023. Although the PDGA does not differentiate age demographics by generation, the survey respondent demographics look similar to the 2022 PDGA Year Demographics Report, which indicates 51.6% of PDGA members being between the ages of 25 and 39.
Across age groups, 95.0% of survey respondents were male, 4.8% were female, and 0.2% were non-binary. According to the 2022 PDGA report, 92.6% of their members are male and 7.4% of their members are female.
Number of Survey Respondents by Race
The PDGA Report does not include the racial demographics of the PDGA’s membership.
Number of Survey Respondents in each US State
83.4% of survey respondents live in the United States, with the map above showing the number of respondents per state. The four most represented states among the fandom survey respondents matched the four states with the most PDGA members.
Number of Survey Respondents in each European Country
10.8% of survey respondents live in Europe. Based on the 2022 report, Europeans make up ~15% of PDGA members. In total, survey respondents identified as being from the United States (2285 respondents), Europe (296), Canada (113), New Zealand (12), “Outside US” (10), Australia (9), South Africa (4), Japan (3), Mexico (2), Uruguay (1), Thailand (1), Senegal (1), Saudi Arabia (1), Israel (1), India (1), and Hong Kong (1).
What is the highest level of education you completed?
The survey included the question “What is the highest level of education you completed?”. Not all respondents fit into the multiple-choice selections we provided, so we made some interpretations and sorted them into categories, some of which were not survey choices. A completed bachelor’s degree was the most common answer (42.8% of respondents), with about 19.5% of respondents identifying as having earned a master’s or doctorate. That suggests 62.3% percent of respondents have a bachelor’s or higher.
Number of Survey Respondents by Politics
To make the political question applicable to non-Americans, we used the terms Right and Left wing. Many people wrote-in last year that they were libertarians, so we decided to offer it as an option in the survey – most libertarians in the US vote Republican. Although skewed Left (but not nearly as much as last year), the survey data provide a reasonable sample size to evaluate patterns across the political spectrum.
How religious would you describe yourself on a scale of 1 to 10?
We asked participants to describe how religious they are on a 10-point scale. Zero was the choice of 40.1% of respondents, while about 31.2% of respondents entered a 6 or higher. For reference, last year, 26.7% of our 2022 survey respondents entered a 6 or above.
Number of Survey Respondents by Household Income
Household income varied from less than $10,000 to $250,000+, with most respondents identifying as having a household income of $50,000-$150,000 (~63% of respondents). Based on the 2022 US Census, 34.4% of American households had a $100,000+ income. Unfortunately, we did not set our income brackets to match the common income brackets used by the census, but ~42.7% of survey respondents have a household income of $110,000+.
My thanks to Karl Lamothe for his assistance in editing this piece as well as the rest of the StatMando team with data analysis and preparation. If you wish to be notified when next year’s survey is ready or want to be emailed when survey results are released, please enter your email address here. If you are interested in being involved in the survey and have experience in polling or a profession related to studying surveys, please get in touch with us at [email protected].
Please see the full series of 2023 articles by following these links:
- The Survey Itself & Who Took It
- Which Pros Do We Root For and Against
- How Fans Feel about Disc Manufacturers
- Fans Relation to Discs
- How Fans Feel about Media and Commentators
- How Fans Feel about Courses
- Mailbag Questions & Final Thoughts
Links for the 2022 Fandom Series articles can be found here.
