The Undefeated partnered with SurveyMonkey to poll the public on the 50 Greatest Black Athletes. In April, 10,350 adults were asked to rank 200 athletes on 20 different surveys. Respondents were asked how great of an athlete each person was/is using a scale of 1 to 10 stars. The athletes were ranked in order based on their average scores to form a top 50 list. From there, the top 60 athletes (including the first 10 who didn’t make the cut to 50) were used to create a final ranking. Each athlete was ranked on four factors: overall ranking, dominance, inspiration and impact on society. Average scores were calculated from each factor to create a composite score. Athletes were ranked in order by their composite score to determine our final list, which will be unveiled in groups of 10 per week for five weeks. We’ll have more on how the public voted – broken down by race, age, gender, education level and census region – after the final group is revealed. The Undefeated’s Justin Tinsley, Jerry Bembry and Aaron Dodson wrote the biographies of the athletes, although they didn’t agree with some of the rankings. But the people have spoken, and the results should spark some serious debate. How we did it

The Undefeated and SurveyMonkey collaborated to rank the 50 Greatest Black Athletes as determined by the public. In February, pretesting began utilizing the SurveyMonkey Audience. Respondents were asked two open­-ended questions: “Who is the best athlete of all time?” and “What makes an athlete great?” Responses from this survey supplemented a separate list cultivated by The Undefeated to curate the list of 200 athletes to rank in Phase One.

The Phase One survey narrowed the list of 200 athletes down to the top 60. It was conducted online on SurveyMonkey from April 10-­14, 2017, among a national sample of 11,287 adults age 18 and older. Respondents for this survey were randomly selected from the nearly 3 million people who take surveys on the SurveyMonkey platform every day. Each respondent randomly received 10 athletes to rate (On a scale of 1 to 10 stars, how great of an athlete is each of the following? Skip any athlete you aren’t familiar with), and each athlete was rated by approximately 500 respondents. Data for the survey was weighted for age, race, sex, education and geography using the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey to reflect the demographic composition of the United States. The top 60 athletes with the highest ratings moved on to Phase Two.

The Phase Two survey ranked the top 60 athletes from Phase One according to four criteria, which were aspects that were mentioned as characteristics that made a great athlete in the pre­testing survey:

Each respondent randomly received three athletes to rate on these four dimensions, which were combined to create an overall score. The athletes were ranked by the overall score to determine the top 50 Greatest Black Athletes of All Time. The Phase Two survey was conducted online on SurveyMonkey from April 26 to May 1, 2017, among a national sample of 10,523 adults age 18 and older. Respondents for this survey were randomly selected from the nearly 3 million people who take surveys on the SurveyMonkey platform every day. Data for the survey was weighted for age, race, sex, education and geography using the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey to reflect the demographic composition of the United States.