Trip Report Essay, Research Paper

Trip Report

Summary

This assignment was designed to get the views of athletes toward how the athletic budget is spent and what type of activities that they do. In this case the intended audience was current athletes at Washington State University. Athletes competing in different sports were surveyed. This survey was conducted February 17-20. My target audience was the actual audience that I surveyed. The majority of my surveying was conducted outside of the varsity weightroom.

Assesment

I felt that I got reliable info on the majority of the questions. My goal, as stated above, was to get the view of athletes on what they thought of their budget, and how they spend their free time. I believe that the questions represented what it was I was trying to get. The information that I received will be helpful to my group in that we can assess the athletic budget to see if there is excess spending that can be used by the students.

The questions can be delegated to three different groups, as follows:

Budget and Spending

1. I am aware of how tuition is dispersed throughout the University.

 Twenty-five of the thirty people surveyed (83%) said no, that they do not know how it is dispersed.

2. Yes or no; my tuition is paid by an athletic scholarship.

 Twenty-two of the thirty surveyed (73%) said yes, their tuition is paid for.

3. True or False, I spend all of the meal money allotted to me on the trips.

 Seventeen of the thirty surveyed (57%) said true, they spend all of the meal money.

4. How would you rate the hotels that you stay in during your trips, one being excellent and four being poor.

 Sixteen of the thirty surveyed (53%) circled four, saying that the hotels are excellent, four of the thirty (13%) said that the hotels were poor.

Facilities and Equipment

1. On a scale of one to five with one being that highest, how would you rate the varsity gym?

 Twenty-three of the thirty surveyed (77%) gave the varsity gym the highest rating; not one person gave the gym a rating of four or five.

2. How often must you wait around to use the equipment in the varsity gym?

 Twenty-three of the thirty people surveyed (77%) selected never while only seven said that they sometimes had to wait.

3. How would you rate the student gym?

 Fifteen of the thirty (50%) gave the student gym the highest rating, while five of the thirty (17%) gave it a poor rating.

4. How would you rate the equipment that is used in your given sport?

 Sixteen of the thirty (53%) said excellent, while only one person (3%) said that the equipment they used was poor.

Activities

1. Outside of required activities, how many times do you workout in a week? 1-2 3-4 5-6 6+

 Thirteen of the thirty (43%) said they workout 3-4 times, 27% 1-2, 23% 5-6 and only 7% said that they workout more than six times per week.

For the following questions answers were provided and the respondent was to rank them from one to four

2. Rank the following in the order that you spend the most time

Student Activities Sports Schoolwork Work

 Thirteen of the thirty (43%) picked sports, 33% picked schoolwork as were they spend most of their time. Twenty-six of the thirty (87%) said that Student Activities is where they spend the least of their time.

3. Rank the following excercises, with one being your most preferred.

Weightlifting Running Basketball Aerobics

 Thirteen of the thirty (43%) picked basketball, and 30% picked weight lifting as their number one activity. Aerobics took (87%) of the last place vote

4. Rank these facilities; with one being were you spend the most of your time.

The Cub The Library Computer Lab The Gyms

 Fourteen of the thirty (47%) chose the gyms, and 30% chose the libraries as the place where they spend the most of their time

Problems

There were no major problems in administering the survey. A minor problem that I faced was getting surveys from different sports. It was easy to find the football players, baseball players, and both the men?s and women?s basketball teams. I wanted a fair representation of all sports, so it was harder to get athletes that participated in the smaller sports such as rowing, soccer and rugby. In evaluating the information that I received, a problem that I see is that people filling out the survey didn?t take the time to look at all the options, and the results could be affected by the people who just filled it out as quickly as possible. One of the questions that really sticks out to me is the one asking to rate the students gym. It is obvious that if an athlete were to enter this gym after being the varsity gym, they would give it the poorest rating. The data said that fifty percent of the people surveyed gave it an excellent rating. I believe that this data is inaccurate, and would not consider this as reliable info.

Conclusions

From the data I can conclude that the athletes are happy with the current facilities and the equipment that they use in their given sport. For our group, I believe that little cutbacks in the Athletic Budget can be used to fund more student based activities, and at the same time keep the athletic teams content and competitive.