Good morning everyone! I am reposting this thread as a last reminder to Whiteblaze members who may want to help a fellow AT enthusiast graduate. I have also asked several of the participating clubs to send out last reminders to their memberships. I need your help; I need 60 more hikers to take the survey I created in order to reach the response rate needed. As of this morning, 320 AT hikers had taken the survey; however, for generalizability, 380 hiker responses are needed. I was hoping to have 380 surveys this week so I may present this April (and graduate in May)!!! I would really like to be on the trail for a good chunk of this summer instead of in school, so if you have not yet taken the survey I would really, really appreciate ten minutes of your time!!! Plus, the information you provide I hope will be very useful to participating trail maintaining clubs and the ATC; both of which are expecting the results. I will also post the result on Whiteblaze (in case any of you are curious). Information about the survey and the survey link are below. For those of you who have already taken the survey, thanks again.
SURVEY INTRODUCTION (Previously Posted)
Good day. My name is Barbara Freidt; I am currently working on my thesis at Old Dominion University. Because I am very passionate about both hiking and the AT, I decided to research the user motivations, benefits, and trail preferences of day, overnight, section, thru and multi-use hikers in order to gather information useful to AT maintaining clubs and the Appalachian Trail Conservancy (ATC). Currently, little academic research on these topics exists. Ten trail clubs have already participated in the study and five more have agreed to do so at a later date. I am posting the link to the survey on whiteblaze because I would like to ensure that both the voices of hikers who are not trail club members and the voices of thru-hikers are represented in the results of the study. Information gathered will be shared with AT maintaining clubs and the ATC with the hope that it will be useful in both better understanding current AT users as well as in acquiring funding for continued maintenance of the AT footpath and preservation and protection of its surrounding corridor lands. The survey only takes about 10-15 minutes and requires no contact information. If you would be interested in participating in this study, please click on the link. The link for the survey is: https://periwinkle.ts.odu.edu/surveys/PWXZAR/