madcats

Glad you had fun. It's also a great way to meet nice people who share a common interest Enjoy

Love the transitions and the music. Really brings it alive. Love all the wierd and wonderful hiding places. I put together a short about a year ago in order to try to explain what geocaching was about to my university. I was trying to illustrate how you can learn about the places you visit (hence the sign by the medieval village remains where the cache was hidden). However after making my own, I discovered the fantastic YouTube videos produced by other people, especially some fantastic introductions to Geocaching. Mine just wasn't quite up to that standard. Still, I enjoyed making it. Trying to video your geocaching efforts is quite difficult

Great, Thanks. I should have thought of going back to the getting started page! I'll just print that info off and carry it around with me.

I've been encouraging friends to take up Geocaching, with reasonable success . Sometimes they ask me how Geocaching started and I find this a bit hard to answer. I believe that Geocaching has been around since about 2000, but I don't know what triggered it. I've been asked if it evolved from letterboxing, or orienteering, or if the GPS device manufacturers start it? Does anybody know for sure?

My bet would be on "yes and no" in that for their buck fifty they get years and years of service requests. "How do I adopt, can you email so and so who has my coin, can you change my icon?, I bougt this but they won't adopt it to me can I just take it..." Yeah, but I'll bet most of that stuff is handled by the volunteer staff. Also, I think a lot of this info, while not suspect, is a bit skewed, because of the target audience. You can't exactly advertise this to everybody that logs onto GC.com. As only the people that regularly visit the forums got involved, the forum questions may not be too useful for the study. Interesting, yes, but useful? Not so sure. Thanks for letting us know about the results! Glad you enjoyed them I agree that the info is skewed because it came from keen geocachers. However what I wanted was information from people who were enthusiastic geocachers. I don't plan to generalize from this data. What I'm hoping to do is uncover the ways in which enthusiasts use GPS mobile devices to engage with social and physical contexts, and what the role of community is in this endeavour. I can then combine this info with the mobile informal learning framework I created based on a previous study of PDA and Smartphone users, filling in the gaps, so to speak.

and the remaining 9% have been caching, how long? Oops. Put together the results for the forum in a bit of a hurry as I was about to go off on hols and mistyped this bit. Went back and checked when I saw this post and the actual figures are: <1 year 20% 1 – 2 years 27% 2 – 3 years 20% 3 – 4 years 16% 4 - 5 years 8% >5 years 9%

I've just posted a summary of the raw results from the geocaching web survey in the main Geocaching topics thread. I plan to be in touch with those who have offered to be case studies towards the end of August. The response-rate was brilliant, and the detail you provided about geocaching activities will provide me with plenty of material to analyse. So, many, many thanks to all of you who responded.

Many thanks to all of you who filled in my geocaching web survey. The average length of time taken to complete the survey was just over 17 minutes. I have extracted the raw results and listed them below. I also have a great deal of text data to analyse which is brilliant, but which will take time. I will be in touch with those of you who have offered to be case studies towards the end of August, so keep on geocaching and speak to you then. Geocaching Web Survey Summary The web survey received 661 responses over a period of three weeks. 70% male, 30% female Age Range: 2% 20 or under 13% 21 – 30 33% 31- 40 31% 41 – 50 17% 51 – 60 4% over 61 Number of years geocaching <1 year 20% 1 – 2 years 27% 2 – 3 years 20% 3 – 4 years 16% >5 years 8% Type of GPS device used A dedicated GPS device 93% GPS PDA 5% GPS mobile phone 0.5% Other 1.5% 94% take one or more other mobile devices out with them. 77% take a camera 78% take a mobile phone 11% take an MP3 player Other things considered useful include a PDA to have the cache pages available for “paperless caching” and for mapping, compass, whistle, spare batteries, torch, voice recorder, radio, binoculars, laptop, another GPS unit, walki-talkies Learning through Geocaching 73% of participants had found a cache that inspired them to follow up in some way. 89% of participants felt that they or a member of their caching group had learned something as a result of searching for a cache. 38% felt that geocaching activities had triggered new interests 71% of geocachers who had placed a geocache hoped that people seeking and finding the cache would learn something. 57% of participants had searched for earthcaches. 74% of those who had searched for an earthcache felt that they had learned soemthing as a result. 6% had created an earthcache. Of these, 64% did not feel that they had learned anything as a result of creating their earthcaches, however 61% hopeed that people looking for their earthcache would learn something as a result. How did participants most often geocache? (select all that apply) Alone 58% With partner or spouse 44% With your family 38% With a group of friends 21% With another geocaching group 9% Membership info 47% are members of geocaching.com 1% non-member (I'll check this data carefully) 52% are premium members of geocaching.com 31% are also members of other geocaching groups such as terracaching 69% of geocaching ids refer to individuals, 31% to a group Use of Groundspeak forums Read messages and post frequently 22% Read messages and post occasionally 58% Read messages but don't post 16% Don't use the forums particularly 4% The Geocaching Community 72% of respondents had attended an organised geocaching event 95% of geocachers had made contact with other members of the geocaching community 77% had met other members face to face 89% had been in touch with other members by email 46% had spoke to other members by phone 11% had used some other method of communication Blogging and Photoblogging 17% of geocachers keep a blog, of these, approximately a quarter have at least one blog devoted to geocaching and over 90% discuss geocaching in their blogs. 97% of geocachers take photos while geocaching 7% photoblog while geocaching.

I shall be taking the web survey off-line tomorrow at 11:30am UK Daylight Saving time. I will download the data and post a summary of the raw results in a new thread next week. I'll include a link to that thread here. I'm very grateful to all of you who have provided me with contact details and offered to participate in follow up interviews. I shall be in touch in July/August to organise this. I'd like to thank all of you who have taken the time to participate in my web survey. The response rate has been fantastic and I have got some very rich data. In the 3 weeks from when I first published the web survey and posted my invite in the forums, I have received over 650 responses This is a really high response rate, so I feel pretty happy with my choice of geocachers as my target group of enthusiasts. Of course it helps having caught the bug myself. The OU held a Festival of Research in June at which students were encouraged to produce a multi-media performance of their research. I created a virtual geocache leading people from one to another research performances of other students. This went down well. The OU library are now planning organising a geocaching event for some guests in July that follows a similar model, and I've been asked to write a short "Learn about Guide" on Geocaching to be published in the Educational and Professional Development Prospectus. It still surprises me how few people have heard of Geocaching. Hopefully I can help rectify this as I publicise my research

I shall be taking the web survey off-line tomorrow at 11:30am UK Daylight Saving time. I think this is 06:30am EST or 05:30am EDT, just over 24 hours from now. I will download the data and post a summary of the raw results in a new thread next week. I'm also very grateful to all of you who have provided me with contact details and offered to participate in follow up interviews. I shall be in touch in July/August to organise this. I'd like to thank all of you who have taken the time to participate in my web survey. The response rate has been fantastic and I have got some really rich data.

Yes, I have to admit that that question is causing problems. My original version of the survey did not have it, but I was asked to include it by one of my supervisors (one who is not a geocacher). As you say, when you have a hobby or interest, it's easy to find time to do it. I do find that when I tell people about geocaching, I get a range of responses. Many are intrigued and want to try it out. Some just can't understand how people can set aside enough time to do it. I have received some interesting responses which I will be able to use in my qualitative analysis, but in all honesty, I wish I'd left the question out. Still, you live and learn Thanks for completing the survey.

Many thanks. And thanks to everybody who has come back in the thread with suggestions and comments as well, and to the newbies - a range of responses is great. I have answered some of the comments in the thread, but I didn't want to clutter it up unnecessarily so I've responded to some through PM or email. The fact that so many of you have taken the trouble to give me your feedback is really encouraging and I intend to incorporate many of the suggestions into my follow-up case studies, and mention the source of the ideas in the final thesis. I think it is worth noting that many of the "participants" have actually been proactive and are feeding ideas into the research. I'll post again 24 hours before I'm closing the survey. But to give you some advance warning of the duration of the survey (an omission highlighted quite rightly by an Ann Bush in an earlier post), the survey will close at 11:30am GMT on Friday 29th June 2007.

Thanks for your constructive comments, AlabamaRambler. Criticism is never pleasant, but it is important to be open to it and, hopefully, learn from it. I did go through my survey with my professors first, together with my plans for analysis and follow up case studies. However, I shall to go through the critiques I have had from this forum with them as well. I would very much like to post an invite to the survey in all the national forums as well. I didn't because I did not with to be accused of cross-posting and abusing the permission I had been given by Bryan of Geocaching.com. However in view of your comment I shall email Bryan to see if it would be acceptable to post invites in the other forums. Regarding the flaws in the logic and construction of my survey - I'd be really grateful if you could give me some specifics, but by PM maybe rather than filling up the thread. Hey, there's only a certain amount of criticism a person can take in one go . I did respond some similar critiques about the statistical validity of my survey in this post: http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php...t&p=2910691 . Does this help? What I want is a sample of the most enthusiastic and active geocachers - so those who read the forums and are kind enough to respond to my invitation are exactly the group I am looking for.

Did you intend to target UK cachers? It seems like you might end up with half UK and half not, which - depending on which different ways people are bonkers worldwide - might mean that you have figures which are neither representative of the UK, nor the world as a whole. Anyway, I filled it in, and I did say I live in France. Thanks for filling it in. I didn't intend to target any nationality of cachers. I hoped (perhaps naively) that by posting my original message in the general geocaching topics forum, that it would be read by a spread of cachers worldwide. If I could have posted an invite in every country-specific forum, I would have, but I think that would have counted as cross-posting and I'd have lost the permission to use the forums for my survey. When it was suggested that I post in the Uk forums to ensure some UK response, I couldn't resist it as I am a UK-based student. And I'm really interested in what makes you bonkers (although I tend to refer to it as "enthusastic" ).

As someone who has also completed part of the survey, and as one who did a LOT of stats while in grad school, and who worked for two years as an on-campus statistical consultant for the grad students in the sciences (hard sciences and social sciences) at my university who were in the midst of their thesis and dissertation research, I must agree with fizzymagic's obsrvations. I kinda want to ask the OP: was your survey instrument checked/reviewed by any kind of on-campus research methods/conformance committee before you went ahead and distributed it? You agree that "there are methodological problems galore, among other things?" That's akin to my doctor telling me that I have health problems. if you are going to pile on, at least be specific. It is difficult to respond without specific details. However I'll try to clarify things a little. I'm doing qualitative research, not quantitative. I do not currently plan to do an enormous amount of statistical analysis because my sample is not representative of any sector of the population other than those who go geocaching. I will be able to say things like "Of those who responded, 75% felt that they had learned something as a result of geocaching, and 35% had found a new interest as a result of geocaching" but I'm really using these figures as indicators rather than as an end in themselves. What I am hoping to do is use the data to operationalise the components of Wenger's social theories of learning as expressed in Communities of Practice, Learning, meaning and identity (1998). I would then like to use them to analyse how these components are instantiated in the distributed and mobile community of geocachers. I intend to use the survey to select case studies and then focus in on the key factors that have emerged from the initial survey. Questionnaires and surveys are traditionally associated with statistical analysis, and they are not ideal for qualitative analysis. However I have found that when I ask a group of enthusiasts to fill in a survey that has some free-text answers, I get good data. The enthusiasm they feel for their activity is something they want to share. Coming across so many free-text questions will be a shock for those accustomed to the traditionally designed surveys, and I'm sorry if you feel I've taken too much of your time. I expect a percentage of respondents to drop-out of the survey, but in fact the response rate from the geocaching community has been about 30% (responses as a percentage of views of the original post). I'm really pleased with that so thanks to all who have taken the time to respond.

Many thanks to everyone who has responded. I'm getting some really rich data. Many have expressed an interest in the results. Obviously, it will take me some time to do the full analysis, however I should be able to pull out the simple statistics fairly quickly and will post them up in the Groundspeak forums. My original plan was to leave the survey live for about 3 weeks, so that means I should be able to feeback initial results sometime in July. My thanks to everyone who has taken the time to respond. I've been "spreading the word" about geocaching and its potential through talks and workshops at the OU. It's striking how many people have not heard of it, yet when they do they're really interested. My department have purchased a number of GPS devices of various types and are loaning them out to people. I've been setting some simple campus-based caches to ease people in. There's absolutely nothing wrong with spending time hunting for ammo boxes and other containers.

Well, I hate to commit myself, but if I leave the survey running for about 3 weeks, as I originally intended, then I should have all the data by the beginning of July. I could probably quickly extract some of the statistics and post them here fairly quickly. It's the analysis that's going to take time. So, I guess I could post this preliminary data up here sometime in July. Probably seems like a long time, but the longer I run the survey, the more data I get and the better the results. Gill

I'm a PhD student with the Open University in the UK researching Geocaching. I have posted up a web survey and, with the permission of Bryan from geocaching.com, placed a brief description of my research and a link to my web survey. The invitation post is here: http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php?showtopic=165390 Jaz666 responded in the thread and suggested that it might be a good idea to post the invitation in the UK section as many UK geocachers don't go to the main forums. As I'm a UK student, I'd hate to miss out on data from the UK contingent However, it isn't good netiquette to post the same message in multiple forums, so I've just put a link to my original message in this message. Please follow the link to find out more about my research and get to the web survey. I tried to make the survey fun to do, so do take this opportunity to tell me about your experience of geocaching.

Thanks for pointing that out Maingray. I've identified the renegade question and fixed it. I tested the survey myself and got others to test it before publishing it - but something just always slips through. I'm really pleased everyone is so proactive about filling in the survey and then feeding comments back through this thread. I'm getting some really good data back from this and I shall certainly post initial findings back through this thread. Response-rate to online surveys is often quite poor. However, as I suspected, geocachers are an exception to this. As you've taken the time to give me your views, it is only fair that I take the time to get back to you. I plan to leave the survey live for 3 or 4 weeks and then a full analysis will take some time after that, I dread to think quite how long. However I'll set myself a target of a month to collate the data and do at least some preliminary analyses that I can post here. Having a target date to get responses back may help stop me from indulging in those all too attractive displacement activities

Apologies to anyone who has tried to fill in the survey over the past 20 minutes and received an "unable to access website" message. The university survey server went down and they've just been rebooting it. It's back online now.

Why would it be locked? He has permission for it... I also hope to see the results of the study. Good luck on the research! Thanks for that Goonies. I am hoping that the likert scale in question 3 will give me a reasonably quantifiable indication of motivation, and that I can use the qualitative text responses to provide specific examples. I like your suggestion about measuring geocaching time in relation to free time. I shall incorporate that into my case studies when I do them. Analysis will take a while, however I shall either post a summary of the findings that I think are of most interest in this thread, or I'll collate them on my website and post a link to it here. Thank you all for filling in the survey and posting your views in this thread. I really appreciate it.

Hi, I'm sorry that my question caused you to give up on the survey. It was not intended to offend. I have done several pilot studies and one of the factors that emerged as critical to the level of engagement with the mobile activities I was looking into was motivation. In my last pilot study I provided people with technology (HP IPAQ 6915s with GPS, camera, etc) and asked them to participate in a GPS-guided nature trail. Among my findings was an issue with motivation. Because I am interested in what people do in the informal sphere, I tried to allow a fair amount of latitude in how the participants actually did the pilot. I asked people to do the trail using the IPAQ, but when they did it was up to them, within a 3-4 month period. I asked them to take pictures and record their experiences in a shared blog but I did not specify when or how often. Some participants did participate fully, but a high percentage did not despite seeming very keen at the start of the pilot. Upon further enquiry, "lack of time" was often cited as a reason for non-participation in the blog (all participants did the Nature Trail at least once). However I think that "lack of time" is evidence of a motivational problem rather than an organisational one. My question asking how people find the time to go geocaching is one of several questions designed to assess the level of motivation people feel. I am hoping to be able to consolidate all the answers to my motivational questions to built up some sort of picture. However, thank-you for your feedback. I'll monitor the answers to that question carefully and remove it if it seems to be causing problems. I don't want to put others off as I have you. All feedback is very welcome. Trying to get together the right questions to answer the questions I have in my research is challenging, and despite piloting the questionnaire, I'm sure to have included some bloopers. Please point them out to me

I'm a PhD student based in the Open University in the UK, researching the impact of location awareness on informal learning. I’m particularly interested in geocaching, and in the effect it has had on the way people experience their physical environment and interact with other members of the geocaching community. Bryan from Geocaching.com has kindly given me permission to invite geocachers from the Groundspeak forums to fill in my web questionnaire. I’m looking to collect data from as many geocachers as possible, so please take 10 minutes to complete this survey: http://elsa.open.ac.uk/geocaching.survey I would like to follow up the web survey with some case-studies. If you would be happy to participate in more in-depth interviews either by phone, web-based video conferencing or email, please provide your contact details at the end of the survey. I shall write up the results of this study in my thesis and will post a summary of my findings in this forum, but all data I collect will be anonymised and will not be tracked back to individuals. For more details about my PhD research, or to contact me about this study, please visit my university webpage or post your questions in this thread. I hope the survey will be fun to do. Thanks in advance for participating. Gill