r/SportPsychResearch • u/SportsPsychResearch • Mar 10 '26
Seeking Participants – Quantitative Study [RESEARCH] Athletes (25+ years old) wanted for a survey on athletic identity!
What does being an athlete mean to you? I want to hear from adults across the lifespan about their athletic identity.
I am looking for people who:
- Are 25+ years old (no upper limit!)
- Identify as an athlete
- Currently train/practice for a sport
- Competed in the past year OR plan to compete next year
👉 Take the 15-20 min. survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.ca/r/AthleticIdentity
Contact: Derrik Motz, PhDc (derrik.motz@uottawa.ca).
uOttawa REB Approval: H-02-26-12017
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u/lithigin Mar 17 '26
Running out of patience; I think I'm on page 4 and they all sound the same. TBH, not sure I'm going to finish this without a progress bar. Are there 10 pages more??
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u/SportsPsychResearch Mar 17 '26
There are a lot of ones that sound the same - this is so when it's all said and done we can figure out which questions worked well and drop questions that weren't so great. Just trying to hit multiple angles if that makes sense - it is a bit of overkill but that's the way our study has to go!
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u/howdyhowdyhowdyhowdi Apr 22 '26
As a scientific professional myself this seems blatantly biased, you're basically just saying that by "performance" of a question you mean the ones that don't fit the narrative you're trying to hit here, which ia bad science. The fact that you're just out and saying it is even worse. This is unethical.
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u/SportsPsychResearch Apr 22 '26
Hi thanks for your reply.
The performance of the items is based on statistics, not by "our narratives". We have already developed new questions, based on previous research and theory, and now we are surveying these new items and will quantitatively assess them using best psychometric practices that have been established for decades - assessing items in data cleaning, then for reliability, validity, and then through EFA, ESEM, CFA, invariance, etc. All of these procedures are detailed in several survey development and psychometric/statistic textbooks and they have been approved by research ethics for this study!
Hopefully this clarifies what I meant by "performance" :)
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u/ahfuckinegg Apr 22 '26
hey, just wanted to say my partner is in evaluation and is always struggling with explaining this side of things to people outside the field. The wording of questions is always carefully considered and changing a little thing in the question may seem like a small thing to an outsider, but actually changes a lot about what information can be reliably obtained from those responses. just wanted to say i see you and great job, i know it is tedious. I’m bookmarking this to take when I get home.
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u/SportsPsychResearch Apr 22 '26
Thanks for your reply and I appreciate the support - there is definitely a lot of time and effort that went into creating the questions, and into have necessary redundancies so to speak. Let your partner know we see him too haha! Thanks for your interest in our work!
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u/endurance-animal Apr 11 '26
Everyone in the comments complaining about the repetitive questions but it’s not that hard to complete. Just submitted mine. Curious to see how the results look! Good luck.
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u/CheeseburgerLover911 Mar 17 '26
is this a paid survey?
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u/SportsPsychResearch Mar 17 '26
Hi there - no unfortunately it isn't. In Canada, where this is based, it is very difficult to get funding to pay participants, especially when it comes to surveys. Since we need so many participants (300++), that adds up very fast!
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u/abclife Apr 11 '26
If you're asking for 15-20 min of ppl's time with repetitive questions, you should be paying them.
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u/SportsPsychResearch Apr 13 '26
Thanks for your comment - unfortunately that is not feasible for a large scale survey project in academia.
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u/ArtianArkaos Apr 21 '26
Done, good luck with your research. This was actually a topic on my mind for a while now. I think it is common in society to perceive athletes as professionals only. But as an amateur who puts a lot of time in my sport, exercise, comp prep, diet etc. I consider myself an athlete all the same.
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u/Championnats91 Mar 16 '26
Done. The questions get a bit philosophical towards the end
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u/SportsPsychResearch Mar 17 '26
Thank you ver much! They do but that's all part of the process to eventually them all statistically and and drop some of the poor performing ones!
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u/gravi-tea Mar 18 '26
I am curious what makes a question poor performing. Is it when it is often unanswered? Or if it is an outlier against the expected response?
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u/SportsPsychResearch Mar 18 '26
We do some stats later and find out if the question has reliably asked the same thing, whether responses were consistent, and check if the questions fit with their proper group (many questions together represent a greater construct we are looking to measure). There are a lot of stats to do later!
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Mar 17 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/SportsPsychResearch Mar 17 '26
Thank your for taking the time to support this research!
It should have saved your answers if it timed out, so that's no problem. Again we really appreciate your time!
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u/tweepot Apr 22 '26
I identify as an athlete but am delighted to have left my competitive days behind me. It drives me nuts that so many folks seem to assume that competition is a necessary part of being an athlete. Best of luck with your survey.
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u/SportsPsychResearch Apr 22 '26
Hi u/tweepot
Thanks for your feedback - this is something I have often debate with colleagues, that being an athlete doesn't mean competition, especially if competition is not the underlying goal/value of that identity (can be working on skills, health/well-being, joy, etc.). I really appreciate your comment and it is something I hope to address down the road in my studies.
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u/Long_Liv3_Howl3r Apr 22 '26
For the “number of competitive events in the last 12 months” question I play about 3 games a week for 9 months of the year, meaning about 110 games, each of which I’d consider to be competitive. It did not like that answer. Was I not understanding the question? It seems like the number I put in was higher than the acceptable range.
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u/SportsPsychResearch Apr 22 '26
There may be a cap of the number of events per year, some sports might lead up to just one event. I think the cap is 100, so just put as close you can to that number :)
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u/Reasonably 23d ago
Were there any people that identify as "Athletes" involved in writing this survey? Honestly, this almost feels satirical with how strangely granular and specific the questions are- unless it has a secondary purpose of studying how adult "Athletes" engage with this type of material which, after reading through the whole thing, is what I honestly think may be the true motive.
If not, I'm gonna pile on and give some unsolicited suggestions, the most important one being- fewer participants means fewer data points. Collecting responses is kinda the point- so you need to respect your audience and at least ATTEMPT to make it easy for them to participate.
There are a lot of people here trying to give you honest feedback on the questions, and the survey itself, and most of your answers have been quite defensive. It doesent matter WHY you made these decisions... they are telling you that your decisions led them to quit the survey. We don't know if you are measuring question performance, simply unaware of the similarities, or if there's an inter-department competition over who's version ends up being the "best". Ultimately, it's irrelevant when the people you are asking to donate their time quit because they feel their time isn't being respected.
For example, questions like:
- Just about everything I do is related in some way to my sport participation.
- My life revolves around sport participation.
- I am strongly committed to being an athlete.
- Being an athlete is an important part of who I am.
- I spend more time thinking about sport than anything else.
- Just about everything I do is related in some way to my sport participation.
- Sport is the most important part of my life.
- Almost every decision I make is influenced by my sport involvement.
- I would describe myself as an athlete.
- Being an athlete is a consistent thread in my life story.
- Being an athlete is a long-standing identity for me.
Are all seeking to get the same 1 or 2 pieces of data
- Does this person identify as an Athlete?
and
- How much does their life revolve around athletics?
If you are looking for the most effective syntax, I'd suggest grouping the various permutations on the same quiz page, and instruct respondents to answer whichever versions of it they wish to. That way it is clear to them they don't HAVE to answer everything, and also gives you data on which versions garnered the highest response rates.
An alternative approach for validity would be to have multiple versions of the survey- so you can compare the responses for each question and draw conclusions from there. This would make the survey FAR faster to complete, less redundant, and also give you contrasting data not only on the direct responses to the questions, but also on the variations of answer strength between similar questions in different quizzes.
Now that I've spent more time on this answer than I would have on the quiz, I wish you the best of luck!
Science is important!
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u/Grav37 Mar 18 '26
I stopped on page 6 I think, after answering the same question for the 6th or 7th time.
This is likely the worst survey I've ever attempted.