Results of the 2018 sportanddev.org annual survey

Every year, we ask users to provide feedback on our services, what could be improved and the future of sportanddev.org. Here are some of the highlights from this year’s survey.

About survey participants

Questions about respondents help us get an idea of our community’s demographics. This year, 63% were men and 37% women, and they were fairly evenly spread across the age groups.

As in previous years, the highest number of respondents were based in Europe (28%, down from 37% last year). They were followed by Sub-Saharan Africa (24%) and North America (20%), which both saw increases from the previous year (up from 20% and 14% respectively), South Asia (9%) and Australasia (6%). These figures suggest greater geographical diversity in our community and we aim to encourage that trend to continue over the next year.

The largest number of participants said they were working for NGOs (38%) and in the sports sector (37%). The rest of the responses reflected the diversity of our target audience, evenly spread across academics, government employees, donors, students and the media. Many participants affiliated with more than one group.

Use of sportanddev.org

We wanted to get a sense of how community members are using information on sportanddev.org. We were pleased to find out that the majority have used it in their own work and many have applied for jobs, attended events and even formed partnerships after reading posts on sportanddev.org:

• 33% said they have posted a job opportunity, event, article or publication on sportanddev.org
• 24% said they have applied for a job after finding the advertisement on sportanddev.org
• 23% have attended an event after reading about it on sportanddev.org
• 75% have used information found on sportanddev.org in their own projects or programmes
• 20% have formed a partnership after reading about that organisation on sportanddev.org

Views on sportanddev.org

We asked respondents to rate statements about sportanddev.org based on how much they agree with them. The results included:

• 75% said they strongly or mostly agree that sportanddev.org is the leading source of information on sport and development (21% neither agree nor disagree and 4% mostly or strongly disagree)
• 76% said they strongly or mostly agree that sportanddev.org has been important in helping the sport and development sector grow (23% neither agree nor disagree and 2% mostly or strongly disagree)
• 80% said they strongly or mostly agree that they trust the integrity and impartiality of sportanddev.org (18% neither agree nor disagree and 2% mostly or strongly disagree)
• 92% said they strongly or mostly agree that they would like to see sportanddev.org grow and provide more services to its users and stakeholders (6% neither agree nor disagree and 2% mostly or strongly disagree)

Room for improvement

We also asked respondents to comment on how we can improve. We received numerous responses, but a few themes came up several times and we will make them priorities in the next 12 months to the extent that we can within our resources:

• Provide more content and case studies from different regions (especially Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America)
• Organise educational opportunities, workshops, conferences, etc.
• Make the site more user-friendly (especially the connect section and search function)
• Post a higher number of job and event opportunities and publish them earlier
• Take a more active role in policy

Due to space restrictions, the information presented here provides only the highlights, and we have analysed the data in more detail. If you would like more information, then please email [email protected].

In addition, we asked survey respondents to comment on the sustainable development goals and the future of sport and development. We will present the results of that section in a forthcoming article.