I recently ran a survey of practitioners of jiu jitsu. See here for the original post and the link to the survey for those who still want to take it. I am simply going to leave it up and running as I can always update the findings if a significant number of additional people take it (which I doubt at this point). For now, I already have enough respondents to start reporting results. But first, let me begin by thanking the 500+ jiu jitsukas who voluntarily took the time to take this survey. I realize it was long and that certain items could have been improved, worded differently and better, etc. So, your efforts and patience are greatly appreciated.

I also want to thank all of the people who took time to help me spread the word about the survey. Without a push on social media (via multiple blogs, FB pages, forums, webpages, etc.), I wouldn't have had nearly as many participants. Indeed, one of the nicest things about the data is how many people from around the world took it (see below for more on that)! And while there were plenty of 18 year olds, there were also a solid number of people in their 60s and even 70s. So, from an empirical standpoint, it is a pretty representative sample and with 500+ participants, any statistically significant relationships found in the data (which is a task for another day) should have plenty of explanatory power.

For now, I am simply going to report the basic/raw findings in a series of posts beginning with this one. Each post will present the results from each of the three respective sections of the survey: (a) the basic demographic section, (b) the jiu jitsu related section, and (c) the market research section at the end. Keep in mind that because I did not use "forced choice"--that is, you could simply leave answers blank--the number of participants for each question can and does vary. This is simply the cost of not mandating people respond if they didn't feel like it (or if the questions weren't clear).

Once I am done posting the bulk of the findings here on the blog, I will release the full data set in several formats: (a) a pdf, (b) a MS word document, (c) a MS Excel spreadsheet, and (d) a CVS file for SPSS users. I am probably not going to be doing much data analysis on this data set--mainly just compiling the raw findings and passing them along. But if people are interested in digging deeper into the data, they should feel free to do so. All I ask is that they let me know what they find!



That said, here are the baseline demographic findings for the survey. Let me know what you think. The most depressing thing to me is how few women there are relative to men--which is something the jiu jitsu community needs to think long and hard about remedying. Women constitute half the population. How can they be less than 10% of the jit jitsukas (when it is so well-suited for them)? It's an pox on the house of jiu jitsu (in my opinion).

The findings are below the fold!