Member Survey Results, September 1995
The NASWA Survey
What an enthusiastic response!! Nearly 35% of you responded to the NASWA Survey and provided your club with enough valuable information to keep the executive board meeting for years to come. And fascinating information it was too.
WHO BELONGS TO NASWA: Statistically, the average NASWA club member is a 45-55 year old male who started in shortwave between the ages of 13 and 15, and has been in the hobby for 25 years. This statistical person uses 2 receivers (one of them a Drake R8), has not bought a new receiver nor new equipment in the last year and spends 12.8 hours a week with hobby activities. The average NASWAn uses an outside antenna, collects QSLs but does not participate in the Awards Program. As for the number of SWLs vs. DXers: exactly equal.
READER PREFERENCES: Responses ranged widely in the selection of the most favorite and least favorite columns. Many of you inserted editorial disclaimers about your choices, underlining your strong likes or dislikes of a particular column or topic. All of this is helpful information and will be carefully evaluated by the Executive Board and the column editors. And remember, as you read the most and least favorites below, they may not correspond at all to how you individually “voted,” but they do represent the mass sentiment.
THE FIVE MOST FAVORITE COLUMNS: 1) Listener’s Notebook; 2) English Schedules; 3) International Band Loggings; 4) Tropical Band Loggings; and, 5) Equipment Review.
THE FIVE LEAST FAVORITE COLUMNS: 1) Radio Stamps; 2) CPRV Page; 3) NASWA 25 Years Ago; 4) NASWA Awards, and, 5) Scoreboard.
OTHER IDEAS: A number of you shared ideas for columns–n fact, a frequently voiced request was for “a Pirate Column,” which, you will notice, has already been added to the Journal. Another idea was for an informal review column that would review travel books, radio related fiction, Anthropology and similar such things that would be of interest to shortwave radio folks.
Most of the Executive Board and column editors met at the Eighth (!) Annual Winter SWL Fest in March to discuss the preliminary results of the survey. This group will continue to work with the data and use it to better the Journal as well as NASWA. We appreciate very much your willingness to complete the questionnaire and tell us your likes and dislikes. Rich will most likely report on the survey from time to time in his column.
Again, thanks.
Harold Cones, for the Executive Board.