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Model Engineer Survey

This topic has 28 replies, 13 voices, and was last updated 27 April 2011 at 10:06 by David Clark 13.

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22 April 2011 at 15:58 #37478
David Clark 13
Participant
@davidclark13
The latest Model Engineer survey
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22 April 2011 at 15:58 #67351
David Clark 13
Participant
@davidclark13
Hi There

I have had about 80 surveys back so far. More are expected, please fill yours in and send it back, all will be looked at.

Some interesting information has come to light.

So far, the majority of respondents do not belong to clubs.

The quality of Model Engineer is very good with only a half dozen minor complaints.

The majority of people are happy with the drawing quality in Model Engineer.

Most readers would like 2 to 4 pages about making tools included in Model Engineer. Very few (about 5) would not like any articles on tooling at all.

regards David

Edited By David Clark 1 on 22/04/2011 16:01:37
22 April 2011 at 17:12 #67355
Richard Parsons
Participant
@richardparsons61721
Can I send my reply by E-Mail. You could get it by Tuesday. By post well who knows

Rgds

Dick
22 April 2011 at 19:29 #67359
NJH
Participant
@njh
Hi David

Do you intend a survey in MEW also? In view of the latest furore on technical drawings I will certainly return mine!

Whatever the result I feel they are useful – after all if you don’t ask readers how can you know what they think? If people then don’t bother to respond then they have only themselves to blame if they don’t like the content.

Any prospect of an “On Line” response in the future?

Regards

Norman
22 April 2011 at 20:53 #67364
Colin Jacobs 1
Participant
@colinjacobs1
80? only 80!? Apathy rules hey?

Where can I get a form please?
22 April 2011 at 21:04 #67367
David Clark 13
Participant
@davidclark13
Hi There

Only 80 because I have only had them from the last 3 days.

You can find a copy in ME issue 4402 or MEW 177 in a fortnight.

Yes NJH, it will be in MEW.

Surveys can be returned by email.

I will still need name and address in case you win a prize.

regards david
23 April 2011 at 05:56 #67373
Paul Boscott
Participant
@paulboscott25817
David

My on line subscrition is not showing 4402 as avaliable yet 23-4-11

Paul
23 April 2011 at 11:11 #67392
David Clark 13
Participant
@davidclark13
Hi There

No, it is not online.

I will shout at them on Tuesday.

regards david
23 April 2011 at 12:15 #67397
Colin Jacobs 1
Participant
@colinjacobs1
With the club thing They are very few and far between and I would love a club whwre you could meet on a weekend and use tools unavailibale to the amateur but alas most have no machinery now due to H&S or the members are not interested in new blood

I felt so out of my depth in my local club I left, There was something missing and I did not know what.
23 April 2011 at 17:26 #67415
Richard Parsons
Participant
@richardparsons61721
Dave I meant I would fill in your survey in ME
t, and send it to you either as a TXT, DOC, PDF or JPG file (your choice). I would choose TXT as I could “ferkal” with it and automate the analysis.

Prizes – forget them- I am too old for that caper

Please do not shout at the modern day ‘techies’ they are a ‘load of ballerinas’ and wil have a touch of the ‘vapours’ and swoon if you look at them cross eyed. A mild rebuke and they have to lie down in a darkened room for several hours! They are not like the tough old time Systems Analysts.

Regards

Dick
26 April 2011 at 09:50 #67534
Diane Carney
Moderator
@dianecarney30678
Hi Graham

As you will not be completing a survey due to its being a statisitcal waste of time, and you do not buy Model Engineer as about 90 percent of its content is not to your liking, could you possibly give us about 50 words on ‘What would induce me to subscribe to Model Engineer’?

Regards

Diane

PS this is genuine interest, not sarcasm.
26 April 2011 at 10:03 #67535
David Clark 13
Participant
@davidclark13
Hi Grahame

Please post it on here.

I am sure other members would be interested to see if you have any thoughts and opinions of your own.

regards David
26 April 2011 at 10:04 #67536
Diane Carney
Moderator
@dianecarney30678
Hi Graham

Home page / Contact the Model Engineer Team

Regards

Diane
26 April 2011 at 10:39 #67537
Steve Garnett
Participant
@stevegarnett62550
Posted by Diane Carney to Graham on 26/04/2011 09:50:05:

As you will not be completing a survey due to its being a statisitcal waste of time, and you do not buy Model Engineer as about 90 percent of its content is not to your liking, could you possibly give us about 50 words on ‘What would induce me to subscribe to Model Engineer’?

PS this is genuine interest, not sarcasm.

Given that it was me who (perhaps a little unfortunately) gave rise to rather a more in-depth consideration of the value of surveys, all I can say about this is… hooray! If you want to increase circulation it is always worth asking the people who don’t subscribe rather than the ones that do.

For myself, I don’t subscribe to ME either, but I do to MEW. This is simply because I don’t really describe myself as a ‘model engineer’ as such. Doesn’t mean that I don’t make models though – I make them in the sense that I model ideas, and quite often not just my ones, so really this is more like experimental engineering, I suppose. Which means that for me, the techniques that get used by others are of far more interest. So if I read ME, it’s because I’ve glanced through it and found articles that have an interest from this POV, not because I want to make the actual model concerned. OTOH, I do quite like the ideas behind Stirling engines, so if there’s an article related to those, I might buy it.

Does that give you any idea of the sort of questions you might like to put in a future survey – possibly one in MEW rather than ME?
26 April 2011 at 11:00 #67538
David Clark 13
Participant
@davidclark13
Hi Grahame

What questions do you suggest we ask in MEW?

I need to know today as the survey needs modifying by tonight.

It goes to press tomorrow.

regards David

Edited By David Clark 1 on 26/04/2011 11:01:05
26 April 2011 at 11:03 #67539
John Stevenson 1
Participant
@johnstevenson1
Not Grahame but how about,

What would you like to see covered that isn’t already in the mag?

John S.
26 April 2011 at 11:40 #67540
ady
Participant
@ady
There’s a fair amount of mention about “what I want”.

I’ve had a couple of ME copies but don’t subscribe to either the hard copies nor the online stuff. There’s not much point, I’ve got years of effort to go to achieve a decent standard and make serious use of the publication.

I have however bought quite a lot of beginner specific stuff, and read the lot multiple times including the two volumes of newnes complete lathework.

So back issues would probably be my thing in later years.

It may also be worth cataloging back issue articles into separate groupings for specific interests, there must be a lot after 100 years or so.

Like separate manuals for a specific subject, which could be purchased either as a book/haynes type manual or via an online subscription.

beginners

buildYourOwnTooling

aeroEngines

stationarySteamEngines

mobileSteamEngines

lathes

milling

locos

boilers

hintsAndTips

etc etc etc

The easiest most efficient way to do it is if it’s already online because an online database is so dynamic.

You flag different articles over the decade with their specific markers.

So a very simple stationery steam engine could be flagged

StationeryEngine

SteamEngine

MillingLathe (i.e. needs both)

Difficulty1-3

Barstock (i.e can be made from the solid)

35lathe (can ALL be done on a 3 and a half inch lathe)

beginners

and so on.

Obviously someone who knows what they are doing would need to do the cataloging.

Then the flags are used at selling time.

So someone like me might be interested in beginners/35lathe/difficulty1-3/barstock which would flag up the stationary steam engine article amongst others which I could browse via a small(useless) thumbnail pictures page and purchase as an individual item via paypal.

It would be an awful lot of work but would leverage a huge saleable asset and give people “what they want”

The fastest way to achieve a return and assess this system would be to concentrate on the more popular type of articles first.

2 cents
26 April 2011 at 14:04 #67544
Steve Garnett
Participant
@stevegarnett62550
Well, Graham’s comments notwithstanding… and also bear in mind that I can’t find copies of any of the previous surveys to look at, so I don’t know if this is in part duplicated. Also, it generally takes quite a few hours of consideration to get really good questions, and I don’t have too long, apparently. So these are just an outline of the procedure.

At the initial stage generally the questions to ask (and this would work both ways around, for either mag, and probably should be done that way) would be the ones that will help to categorise the readership. From this you should get a better idea of why people subscribe to one of the mags, but not the other one. So it’s not necessarily all questions for all readers, although the first part certainly is.

I think initially you might want to get people to describe themselves in terms of what they do, and the way to do this is to take account of the fact that people may fit into different categories in differing degrees. And this inevitably has to go into sections with sub-sections. Fortunately it works with tick boxes, and although it is very much based on a Lickert analysis, it’s slightly modified because it rather assumes the attitude part. Also please note that it is not asking people what they like!

So across the top of the grid we get a continuum with five categories, which says something like:

It’s a primary activity – I do a lot of this – I do very little of this – I don’t do this at all – I wouldn’t dream of doing this

And down the side there will be a list of activities: (you may be able to think of more; this is just representative)

I construct replica models

– from kits

– from raw materials

I use engineering processes and machines

for repairing and rebuilding machinery

– workshop

– other

I carry out experimental engineering and processes

– with a view to making models

– with a view to making and improving engineering machinery

It’s important to ask specifically whether they are subscribers to one or both mags too – but I suspect that happens anyway. From this information you can glean quite a lot about the way people approach their engineering hobby, whatever it is.

Another thing I’d consider might be to list some recent articles from both mags, only mixed up, and see which mag people think that they should be in. You could also include a few future articles in this as well, if that’s possible. Or even make a few up, especially if you can find some titles that might be ambiguous. I certainly found a few, just looking at the few MEs that I have. The thing here is that you shouldn’t allow an indecision point (no don’t care option):

So across the top it will say

Should definitely only be in ME – would prefer this in ME – would prefer this in MEW – should definitely only be in MEW

And then some articles like

How to drill square holes (this was ME 4285)

Musings on Drawings, Dimensions, tolerances and marking out

A Simple Spark Erosion Machine

…etc. On the face of it, the answers to a lot of this might seem blindingly obvious, but if you correlate this with the answers to the previous questions, it might well get rather more interesting.

Unfortunately I don’t have time to develop this fully today, but the general idea is that no one section on its own gives you definitive answers – you have to get sneaky, and not necessarily make it plain what you are trying to get out of people. Not because you are trying to trick them, but simply because they may not have thought through what it would be that you need in order to satisfy what they are actually doing, and might need. It’s a subtle shift of emphasis, really.

The other thing that I would prefer to do, especially on a mass survey, is to trial a few of these correlated questions first, and generally refine the way that the final survey was built. As with all surveys, you have to ask yourself some careful questions about what you really need in the way of answers before you commit to a final version.

Oh, and for everybody else, the reason that we generally go for tick-boxes if we can is that these are so much easier to analyse than written comments are, that you almost wouldn’t believe it. I did a mass survey about fifteen years ago with two comment boxes, and it took about 8 weeks to analyse and break these down, compared to a couple of days for the tick-box answers. Since then I have given a lot more thought to other ways of extracting the same information without the comments!

Anyway, I hope that this is of a little help – even if it’s more in the future than the present.
26 April 2011 at 14:41 #67545
Quentin Reidford
Participant
@quentinreidford69026
Is an electronic version of the survey available?

I would rather not scan the survey but will do that if it the only electronic means available.
26 April 2011 at 14:57 #67546
Steve Garnett
Participant
@stevegarnett62550
Posted by Graham Meek on 26/04/2011 14:14:34:

Hi Steve,

It seems very well thought out to this Thick Forester, if you ask me you have missed your calling, if I knew you compiled it, I might even fill it out, but I bet I could spot the “Trick” question(s) though.

That wouldn’t matter. The whole point of a good questionnaire is to make you think a bit when you fill it in – and sometimes just people asking you questions in a slightly different way to which you might have asked them of yourself makes you realise things about you that you might not otherwise have. But the ‘trick’ answers won’t come from doing your own correlation though – the really useful revelations come more from a lot of answers, rather than single ones.

Couple of other points – I couldn’t actually create this questionnaire properly yet because I don’t know exactly what the Ed wants from it. I know that we may have identified at least one weak spot in terms of what people might find acceptable in terms of MEW coverage, but that’s not quite the same thing as gathering as much pertinent information as possible, and to do this properly I’d need more information. And if I found all this stuff out, then it would become commercially sensitive – and rightly so. So I couldn’t tell you very much about the answers anyway!

Second thing is that as you might have guessed, I’ve studied survey construction. For my first Degree (which my then employer very kindly subsidised donkey’s years ago) I effectively majored in social research, and as a sideline I’ve done quite a few surveys since. I wouldn’t exactly call it a calling, as such – it’s just something that I happen to understand a bit about, and am quite capable of carrying out. To do well though, they are extremely hard work – unless you have a team of willing slaves!
26 April 2011 at 18:20 #67550
Colin Jacobs 1
Participant
@colinjacobs1
1000 views and only 23 replies? I am looking forward to filling in my survey.

Be prepared for some constructive, critisism .
26 April 2011 at 20:44 #67561
David Clark 13
Participant
@davidclark13
Hi Grahame

I can take constructive criticsm.

Constant criticising for the fun of it is another thing.

If I don’t answer you would get annoyed trouble is if I do answer you just come back with another stupid comment. I assume you are retired or otherwise unoccupied with nothing better to do?

The last thing I need is to have to keep replying to your posts but if I don’t that will probably annoy you.

I am trying to finish MEW 177, it goes to press tomorrow.

Otherwise, I might miss something in the proofs and give you further reasons to criticise.

We are going round in circles, it is just a question of who disapears where the sun don’t shine first.

regards David
26 April 2011 at 23:05 #67571
NJH
Participant
@njh
Please guys can you please just stop this or, if you must, continue it in private. This is a great site and a source of much useful information and help. All this is devalued by this public display of disagreement.

Edited By NJH on 26/04/2011 23:05:51
26 April 2011 at 23:15 #67572
Roderick Jenkins
Participant
@roderickjenkins93242
I completely agree with NJH. A moderator should have stepped in many posts ago.

Rod
26 April 2011 at 23:49 #67573
Mike76
Participant
@mike76
Why does this hobby attract so many strange people who have huge egos, an awkward nature, boastful personalities and a sarcastic “humour” coupled with a clever-dick/smart-arse attitude? Then we have the ones who can’t wait to blurt out phrases such as “dissimilarity of materials”, just ‘cos it sounds good.

It’s not a nice combination at all – in fact I find it stomach churning. Spend less time playing the big self-important boaster behind your computer and you’ll enjoy life more.

I used to follow this forum – but for the reasons mentioned above I don’t look at it much now as it”s just full of self-opinionated “look at me” drivel.
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