How do you compare to other Therapists? Now with RESULTS

[millypeed my choccie Lab]

Every business should know where they stand within their industry. I know we all feel like we have a pretty good sense of it, but do we really?

Answer 10 questions and find out immediately how you and your practice compare.
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/SuccessSurvey1 (You will be taken to the survey site and can return here afterwards)

Real Time Results can be viewed here:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/sr.aspx?sm=l06kcXpOmfy7aRBMSwwLpDvz9Gc43obDxz8zJ87ilIw_3d
(You will be taken directly to the results page and can click the "Back" button afterwards to return here.)

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I took a little time this morning to review the survey results and found the information you shared with me to be quite interesting.

Here's the breakdown:

1) Massage Therapists responding have been working for an average of 7.5 years, do 13 massages a week iand charge around $65 an hour.

2) Where those massages are done is fairly spread out between outcalls, in solo offices, within group practices, and at home.

3) While half of you rely on massage as your sole source of income, you (on average) only have 60% of the quantity of massages you'd like to have per week, and only half of you would be willing to accept less per hour to fill those open slots. (You'll hear more from me on this in a future post)

4) You spend around $50 a month on advertising and marketing and while half of you use flyers and local handouts to drum up your business, most (77%) say you use the internet to help bring people to your business.

5) Lastly, and no great surprise here, almost all of you are above average massage therapists as it relates to your skill level.

Any of the results surprising to you? Why?

 

[Pompal 09.]

How do you compare to other Therapists?

I looked at this survey. I am not sure how you expect for it to compare me to other people in our "industry". The most I see it doing is comparing me to whoever else takes the survey. :undecided:

 

[golly_gina]

How do you compare to other Therapists?

Mark, I tried out your survey out of curiosity and my computer security warned me that site was known to harbor viruses so I didn't enter it.

 

[Carrie]

How do you compare to other Therapists?

Dear Pueppi,

I'm assuming you and most other members of this site are massage therapists. To the extent that this is true, and a large enough number of MT's take the survey, then there should be a good statistical probability that the results are close to industry averages.
The same concept is used in political and other polls. When you heard something like " Barack Obama enjoys a 2% lead over his competitors going into the elections ", not every person in the entire United States weighed in on that poll. Could be only 2,000 people were polled, but the statistical accuracy is still usually within +/- 5%.
If you prefer, maybe change the title of my post in your head to "How do I compare to other MT's who took this survey".

 

[KatManDingo]

How do you compare to other Therapists?

Mark, I tried out your survey out of curiosity and my computer security warned me that site was known to harbor viruses so I didn't enter it.

Kathryn,

The survey questions are hosted by the site "SurveyMonkey.com", the largest and most established site for online surveys. This same site is used by schools, the government, and thousands of businesses each day. I have a hard time believing that there is any security risk as no data is downloaded or sent to your computer.
What is recorded is your computer's IP address to insure that no visitor can take the survey multiple times and throw off the data.
My guess is that your security software's settings are so tight that an IP address request triggers a warning message on your computer.

 

[kILLER mike]

How do you compare to other Therapists? Now with RESULTS

Interesting, I've taken other surveys before through surveymonkey, but for some reason it pops up on the one you posted. Maybe my husband has downloaded a recent security setting that I'm not aware of.

 

[Lore]

How do you compare to other Therapists?

Dear Pueppi,

I'm assuming you and most other members of this site are massage therapists. To the extent that this is true, and a large enough number of MT's take the survey, then there should be a good statistical probability that the results are close to industry averages.The same concept is used in political and other polls. When you heard something like " Barack Obama enjoys a 2% lead over his competitors going into the elections ", not every person in the entire United States weighed in on that poll. Could be only 2,000 people were polled, but the statistical accuracy is still usually within +/- 5%.
If you prefer, maybe change the title of my post in your head to "How do I compare to other MT's who took this survey".

In statistics, determination of desired sample size is a prerequisite to determining the accuracy of any survey. If not enough qualified people respond to the survey, the results can not be trusted to accurately represent the larger population. A lesser known fact is that TOO LARGE of a sample size also reduces the extent to which a survey's results can be trusted.

So, do you know what your desired sample size is? If so, what is your calculated margin of error for the results of the survey thus far?

These are some of the reasons why I rarely take informal surveys seriously. The results are interesting to my innate curiosity, but (from a statistician's perspective) the results are never very trustworthy.

 

[Ania B]

How do you compare to other Therapists? Now with RESULTS

I was curious about what the perceneforum.xxxe would be in How do you rate yourself with average MT's... Most rated higher than average. I guess it just goes to show that most are striving to be the best that we can be in order to better meet our clients needs through communication and increasing our skills via CEU's and other methods of learning.

 

[Dani D]

How do you compare to other Therapists? Now with RESULTS

I'm not sure if most therapists are really striving to be the best they can or not. More likely, it's the ego working to rate oneself higher than others. Like driving, everyone likes to think they're a great driver, when reality shows different.

Better questions for a survey to answer that one would be along the lines of: "How many CEU classes do you take per year", "how do you evaluate your business", "what is your client retention rate"-- questions along that vein.