Tandem Cycling - The Annual Tandem Cyclists Survey (Winter 2010)

Given the weather was still not cycling friendly and the playoffs were on, I've gone ahead and used last year's write-in suggestions for future topics to create this year's annual tandem owners survey.

As always, the annual survey is your chance to anonymously share and compare information about your tandem team, experiences, and riding habits with other tandem enthusiasts.

Here is the link to this year's survey: The Annual Tandem Cyclists Survey (Winter 2010) (http://www.opinionpower.com/Surveys/521058416.html)

Graphed results will appear at this link (http://www.opinionpower.com/results.cgi?id=521058416) as they come in.

Mind you, if you are one of the first to submit instead of the 150th the results page / graphs won't be all that revealing. Therefore, and in the mean time, if you'd like to see the results from the seven (7) previous year's surveys, you can find them HERE (http://www.thetandemlink.com/surveys/surveycentral.html).

NOTE: The server will only register one survey submittal per computer and, as before, let me remind you that these surveys are intended for entertainment purposes only and responses are not being collected for commercial purposes. Additionally, no names or identifies are collected or associated with the completion of the surveys on the OpinionPower.com website or by me.

Your question about tires made me curious. How mayny people continue with the original tire brand? I have mainly because I purchase them one at a time and want them to match. Although I am not totally happy with the side wall performance of the tire I am using. Threads start coming loose at the rim bead after a year of use

I should probably have waited a month or so before taking the survey.

I had an accident last summer which injured my elbow. My wife is complaining of neck and shoulder aches. The upshot is we are in the market for a recumbent tandem this winter. That would change several of my answers.

The component failure question didn't have a box for front hub failure. We broke out the flange on our front hub last summer. I bought a replacement hub and relaced the wheel, but it happened shortly before my accident so we haven't been able to ride since.

The question about the consistent whine from the front or back seat made me laugh. Nice work!

Thanks for the Survey TG....we always look forward to them.

Your question about tires made me curious. How many people continue with the original tire brand? I have mainly because I purchase them one at a time and want them to match. Although I am not totally happy with the side wall performance of the tire I am using. Threads start coming loose at the rim bead after a year of use

Hmmm. There's an interesting thought. I've never considered making front and rear match a requirement. If I'm happy with one it'll go on both so I'm just buying the same thing over and over. If I want to switch brands/types, I'll switch in order of when I need to take off a tire anyhow (due to flats or wear). Probably I'm too lazy to switch both wheels if one is still OK. I will probably rotate my front back to the rear at some point, which does require doing both at once.

Is there a probelm with the questionnaire web site? It won't load past question number 9.

Is there a probelm with the questionnaire web site? It won't load past question number 9.It just seems to be slow like it is coming from a 28K modem.
I opened the page and came back to it 10 minutes later and it was finished.

Good work, thanks!

It's actually too soon to say we have a favorite tandem tire since we have only purchased one replacement set so far, so I checked the brand we have currently. Thank you.

Just submitted. No problems... Thanks.

thanks for the work that goe into this survey, good info

Well, it's been about a month since I launched my annual Tandem Survey back on January 17th and with just a few responses trickling in now, five in the last week and the last on February 17th, I figured it was time to give the results a look see and offer up my analysis. Because the questions covered more or less a potpourri of topics there's not much to summarize at a macro level, other than in spite of the economic down turn tandem cycling has seemingly held it's own this past year. Steady growth is the norm, folks are riding as much or more and while we hear a lot of chatter about problems with tandems, the reality is that quite a few folks don't have many issues with their machines (or themselves). The latter suggests what we always expect to be the case, which is for every problem or complaint you hear about on the internet there are 4x - 10x as many folks who have no such problems.

Anyway, I've compiled a snap-shot of the results as of February 18th and provided my analysis of the responses to each question. You can find the results HERE (http://www.thetandemlink.com/surveys/survey_winter10_analysis.html).

If you'd like to see the results from all eight (8) year's worth of surveys, you can find them HERE (http://www.thetandemlink.com/surveys/surveycentral.html).

Finally, because it's been such a sensational winter for so many folks, we may launch a second survey here in the next week or so. There were a number of things that came to mind and that many folks who wrote to us suggested that might be 'fun' to explore to melt away winter blues. More to follow.

Now, I'm not sure there's a direct connection here or not (probably not), but it's interesting to see that 215 respondents (62%) reported no real problems with their tires. Now, where did I just see 62%?? Oh, that's right... the 211 folks (62%) who use Continental tire.

So you have the raw data, right? Can you just see whether the Continental folks have a (statistically significant) difference in their satisfaction rate than the population as a whole (or as the non-Continental folks)?

Even in the normally sunny/dry/drought southwestern part of the US we are experiencing winter monsoons (rain!) and a bit cooler and windier conditions.
A 2nd survey . . . why not?!

So you have the raw data, right? Can you just see whether the Continental folks have a (statistically significant) difference in their satisfaction rate than the population as a whole (or as the non-Continental folks)?

Sort of... if you consider having 350 individual Emails to be 'raw data'. But, be that as it may and because I'm a giver... at least of time... I've gone ahead and done my best to parse out as much discrete data as I can. On the whole, Schwalbe tires seem to be the cat's meow, but Conti's are right up there which ain't bad for an OEM tire. Anyway, y'all can draw your own conclusions from the additional information which I've added to the Question #7 results: http://www.thetandemlink.com/surveys/survey_winter10_analysis.html and that I've also posted below.

http://www.thetandemlink.com/surveys/rawtiredata.jpg

Subject to all your caveats about survey and analysis methodology, it appears there were only two outliers. Assuming a binomial distribution, Avocet was outside the 95% confidence interval on the low side, and Schwalbe was outside the 95% confidence interval on the high side. To discriminate among the others would require larger values of N.

Of course we don't know how these correlate to the use to which the respondents put their tires. Some will sacrifice tread life for rolling resistance, or weight. Others will put flat resistance above all else.

Still, interesting.

And I had no idea you got individual email messages as responses...:eek:

Only one carbon fiber fork failure was good news in the survey. The carbon fork on our Santana is coming up ten years old. Besides the 20,000 or so cycling miles on it, there's another 60,000 miles of travel with it locked in a fork mount travel rack in the bed of our pickup which has a topper. It's out of the weather and wind forces but i inspect it often and wonder how long it can take the constant movement. The only thing I've noticed is that the lawyer lips have worn down to next to nothing.....which isn't all bad.