The demographics of survey respondents.
November 20, 2024 by Josiah Zoodsma and Jesse Weisz in Analysis, News with 0 comments
Welcome to the first of a series of offseason articles documenting the findings from the 2024 FAR/Ultiworld Fandom Survey!
What is the Fandom Survey?
At its onset in 2022, the Fandom Survey was a relatively modest endeavor to understand who fans root for and what affects their fandom. Currently in its third year, the Fandom Survey has expanded in scope. Now run by the team at First Available Research (FAR), the Fandom Survey amounts to a census of, and for, the disc golf community.
Broadly, the goal of the Fandom Survey is to better understand the disc golf community and help guide the sport we love forward in a data-driven way. To help achieve this goal, the Fandom Survey partnered with the PDGA and the DGPT to develop and distribute the survey, ensuring the governing bodies of our sport are actively engaged with the survey’s findings. More information about the team at FAR, our mission, and the Fandom Survey can be found at discgolfsurvey.com.
The purpose of this initial article is to share who comprises the disc golf community that participated in the 2024 FAR/Ultiworld Fandom Survey and set the foundation for all future articles in this series. We will first summarize the demographics of the survey respondents and how they found the survey, as this information is critical to our interpretation of future results. We strive to have our survey be as representative of the entire disc golf community as possible, however we know our data is likely skewed toward people who are online, follow one of the media sources that shared a survey link, and were willing to take a survey.
The Fandom Survey was open to responses for a little over one month this year (7/25/24 – 8/28/24). In the context of the professional disc golf season, this coincided with three tournaments: Ledgestone Open, LWS Open at Idlewild, and the World Championships. In total, almost 10,000 survey respondents began the Fandom Survey, and roughly 70% completed the entire survey. This is well over double the responses from last year!
But how did respondents find out about the survey this year?
Note: for all graphs included in this and future articles, you can hover your mouse (or tap with your finger) over the graphs to get additional information about each group.
Through our partnership with the DGPT, most survey respondents found out about the survey on live, or post-produced, disc golf coverage. Promotion for the survey was also made through the PDGA and various disc golf podcasts, disc golf newsletters, and local social media groups. Last year, nearly all of the respondents found out about the survey through media sources such as Ultiworld Disc Golf and Foundation. Our diverse and partnered promotion strategy this year allowed us to reach a broader audience than ever before, so we hope it will be a more representative sample of the entire disc golf community.
So who were the survey respondents?
Birth Year of Survey Respondents
Just as in previous years, the majority of the survey respondents in 2024 (approximately half) were millennials between the ages of 28 and 43. Encouragingly, this, and other demographic information included in this article, show similar distributions to those outlined in the 2023 PDGA Year End Demographics report.
Gender Identity of Survey Respondents
Approximately 8% of the survey respondents identified as a woman – a 66% increase from last year’s survey!
Approximately 90% of the survey respondents identified as white when asked about race.
Number of Survey Respondents in each US State
75.9% of the survey respondents identified as living in the United States, with the map above showing the number of respondents per state. All 50 states were represented among the Fandom Survey respondents in this year’s survey, with the most represented states being Texas, Michigan, California, and North Carolina. These are also the four states with the most PDGA members.
Number of Survey Respondents in each European Country
18.9% of the survey respondents identified as living in Europe. Based on the 2023 PDGA report, Europeans comprise approximately 15% of PDGA members. Over 70% of all European responses were from individuals living in Finland, Sweden, or Norway. In addition to Europe, we had many respondents from Canada (4.1%, 278 respondents) and Australia/New Zealand (1.3%, 87 respondents).
60.2% of the survey respondents identified as being active PDGA members.
57.8% of the survey respondents identified as being current DGN subscribers.
What was included in this year’s survey? Respondents of the 2024 Fandom Survey answered an array of questions on five main topics:
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Player Perceptions: What does the disc golf community think of professional players?
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Entertainment from the Sport: How does the disc golf community prefer to engage with the sport as a fan?
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Engagement with the Sport: How does the disc golf community prefer to engage with the sport as a player?
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Sponsor Perceptions: How does the disc golf community view endemic and nonindigenous sponsors?
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Participant Profile: Who is the disc golf community?
This year, the Fandom Survey also utilized personalized surveys for all respondents. How was this different from past years’ surveys? All questions were filtered based on a respondent’s previous answers. For example, only respondents who indicated that they were PDGA members were asked about their view on current PDGA membership benefits. In this way, we were able to remove impartial or non-applicable respondents from specific questions throughout the survey, and every respondent only spent their time answering the questions that were the most applicable to them.
Additionally, survey respondents were able to choose the length of survey they were willing to take.
All five of the main topics for the Fandom Survey were included in every survey, regardless of the length of survey chosen. However, respondents who indicated that they had more time to take a longer survey were given more follow-up questions on various topics. For example, pertaining to the consumption of disc golf content on other social media platforms:
- All survey respondents were asked: “What platforms do you consume other disc golf content on?”
- Survey respondents who answered that they wanted a longer survey were then asked about how often they used those platforms.
- Survey respondents who took the longest survey were then asked, “What accounts are your favorites?” on specific platforms.
In this way, all surveys had the same breadth of topics, but longer surveys had greater depth. Excitingly, over 60% of respondents opted for the longest survey! Because of this survey personalization, we will diligently share the number of respondents in all of our graphics wherever possible as it varies from question to question.
We are excited to share our analysis of all of this great content in the upcoming articles – stay tuned!
- If you are interested in learning more about the team and research goals at First Available Research, click here!
- If you want to read articles from last year’s Fandom Survey, click here!
- If you want to be notified of the publication of future articles in this series and/or want to take future disc golf surveys from our group, click here!
- If you have any questions, comments or mailbag topics for future articles, submit them here!
Special thanks to Lauren Campbell, who was instrumental in developing our research plan and assisting with survey design. Also, thanks go out to the Fandom Survey’s editor, Karl Lamothe.
