From britdisc-owner@csv.warwick.ac.uk Fri Dec 3 00:19:31 1999 Received: by pansy.csv.warwick.ac.uk (8.9.3/8.9.3) id AAA25667 for britdisc-outgoing; Fri, 3 Dec 1999 00:09:39 GMT Received: from daffodil.csv.warwick.ac.uk (daffodil [137.205.192.30]) by pansy.csv.warwick.ac.uk (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id AAA25652 for <britdisc@csv.warwick.ac.uk>; Fri, 3 Dec 1999 00:09:35 GMT Received: from mail-gw1 (mailgate.webleicester.co.uk [195.146.160.12]) by daffodil.csv.warwick.ac.uk (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id AAA16090 for <britdisc@csv.warwick.ac.uk>; Fri, 3 Dec 1999 00:09:34 GMT Received: from pii266 (pool1-pri1-007.webleicester.co.uk [195.146.163.137]) by mail-gw1 (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id AAA08352 for <britdisc@csv.warwick.ac.uk>; Fri, 3 Dec 1999 00:16:13 GMT Message-ID: <007801bf3d23$a330d760$89a392c3@pii266> From: "Ben Ravilious" <bravil@webleicester.co.uk> To: "BRITDISC" <britdisc@csv.warwick.ac.uk> Subject: Re: Conducting a Census Date: Fri, 3 Dec 1999 00:14:09 -0000 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.72.3110.1 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.3110.3 Sender: owner-britdisc@warwick.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Sorry to say it, but there's just no way you can expect every player to fill in a form. I know - its my job to try! The only way it could happen is if you happened to be contacting individuals about something else which they had good reason to respond to. (e.g. membership subs letters). There are so many people 'on the fringes' who play occasionally or maybe play at their school who you could never expect to reach. Arguably such people are the ones we'd be most interested in too - Doh! We're going to have to be damn careful we don't exclude these people with individual membership as it is. I think there *is* some mileage in the idea of a survey which team contact could fill in on behalf of their players. We already do this very casually with the annual BUF subs form. Funny how Catch 22 always had 22 players - yeah right! Heck, its hard enough trying to contact some teams let alone individuals. They'd have to have a good incentive to complete it (e.g. "you can't go to any tournaments unless you've done it" or "you get x benefits") I think you need to wait for a change in our organisation before you try this stuff - but it would be an interesting exercise. To be honest I would be more interested in directly targeting people who didn't renew subs rather than 'gathering data'. I take it you're volunteering ;-) Ben -----Original Message----- From: Timothy Rogers <trogers@srv1.mech.ed.ac.uk> To: britdisc@csv.warwick.ac.uk <britdisc@csv.warwick.ac.uk> Date: 02 December 1999 14:51 Subject: Conducting a Census There seems to be support for the idea of conducting a census. The question now is how do we conduct the census and what information do we want to obtain from it. Here's a suggestion: 1) We design a form containing the information, ready for a database which can collate whatever results are required. 2) Each club distributes forms to each of their players, who fill the forms in. 3) Each club then either enters the data into a file on the particular database we use, or they send all the written data to the BUF. 4) The BUF then concatenates the files, or enters in the raw data into the central database. They could subcontract a company to do this task or even hire someone as a temporary employee. 5) Data can then be distributed across the community. Obviously, there will be a considerable cost involved, reflecting all the time needed to manage the data. So I propose that each player registered sends a squid for the data entry cost of his/her details. A pound isn't that much money, and if someone makes a bit of cash out of the census it wouldn't bother me if everything was done properly. I don't know, 50p might be more appropriate. The advantage of this scheme of generating the cash, is that people know what the money is being spent on rather than being put into some general bureaucracy. Does anyone know anything about databases? Tim RSB Soup Tim Rogers PhD Student Manufacturing Planning Group School of Mechanical Engineering University of Edinburgh email: trogers@srv1.mech.ac.uk