Hi, my name is Armaan Sood-Mankar. I am a senior at Eagle Rock High School in Los Angeles, California. I have swam competitively for the YMCA of the Foothills for over 9 years. Participating in an Engineering program at my school, my team and I have chosen to investigate and create a solution to an issue that swimmers face. We created a survey that will help us justify our problem. The survey takes less than 5 minutes to complete. Please help us obtain information regarding your experiences with swimming in order for us to complete the project successfully. Thank you!
www.surveymonkey.com/.../57JP5ST
Trying to do the survey, but, I'd suggest a couple of changes:
On question #6, actually, for me, NONE of the 'problems' you list in question 6 are problems. Can you either make this question optional or have a response that says something to the effect of, "Swimming is a sublime and perfect sport; once I'm in the water, all is good with the world."
On question #7, your 'max' number of years swimming is capped at 20. As you posted this on a Masters forum, you'll find that number is not enough. I'm a young Masters swimmer and I've been at it for 45 years.
Question #9 - I think we need a scale to indicate what 1 through 7 means in the context of this question.
Just my :2cents:
I agree with the comments from PWB. You should also be aware that there are already watches that do everything listed except for count kicks and breathes (due to being wrist mounted) and heart rate (due to wet environment). The key issue is "affordable" since the basic ones are nearly $100 and the good ones are several hundred. The watches are very popular with triathletes but not with people who train for swim meets due to a different style of workout. You might want to post your survey on a triathlon forum also. I suspect that many of the "problems" listed are more common in that population since they are often less experienced swimmers. I do not mean that as insult to them - it's just a different sport focus
Hi Armaan, Not meaning to "pile on" but I worked for a while for the US Census Bureau, and absorbed a bit about surveys. You ask your subjects to rank factors in a couple of the questions, but you don't say which way the ranking goes - is it 1=least to 10=most, or vice versa? This may trip you up in interpreting people's responses on those questions.
Yes, as an engineering student, I had to do patent research into watches that count laps before choosing "losing count of laps" as an issue to work on for my engineering project. I am well aware of the existing products. I understand your belief that the survey would be better suited for a triathlon swimmer, but the issues are not just for triathlon swimmers. I am not sure if the "problems" you mentioned were in reference to question 6 or question 9. If you were talking about question 6, all of those problems have nothing to do with swimmer experience. If you were talking about question 9, the mentioned features would apply to any kind of swimmer and could provide beneficial data. I appreciate you taking time to give us feedback. I hope I addressed your concerns.
