S.P.L.A.I.N. 2021 Survey Results

Introduction

I appreciate everyone that took the time to share the survey with their community and answer the survey thoughtfully! There is no longitudinal data (I do not track respondents to keep the survey anonymous), but overall the survey seems to track with the 2019 results. 2021 is the second instance of SPLAIN, and it took me longer than usual (two year, yikes!) to get the data out because I'm a lot busier with a job I really love , organizing with Friends on Bikes, and building a home within a wonderful partnership. I am one person, doing this for free, because I’m a data nerd who loves bikes. I will not be conducting this survey again any time soon because it is a lot of work to promote, analyze, and publish the results on my own. However, I would welcome anyone using the methodology and support them with my survey templates and experience!

In 2021 I added more demographic questions, added shops that I had forgotten in 2019 and removed shops that had closed. However, I still missed some shops, notably Center for Bike Repair, Shots and Sprockets, and Angle Lake Cyclery, so thank you to everyone who brought those omissions to my attention. I also increased the amount of anecdotal feedback by including that space within each shop’s questionnaire, rather than expecting folks to add feedback at the end of the whole survey. I was really happy to see that folks seemed to like this change since I got a lot of anecdotal feedback.

If you are not familiar with SPLAIN and where it came from, I recommend reading about the inaugural survey here.

Methodology

The survey captures and quantifies qualitative phenomena – how comfortable does one feel in a bike shop? I use a weighted average to develop individual shop’s scores which captures the effective importance of the scores from one to five, and accounts for the widely-varying number of responses for each shop. Those shops which received zero, one or two responses were removed from the average rating calculation. Shops that fall into this category: (mend), Evelo, Bike Swift, Seattle E-Bike, the Bike Shack, Hampsten Cycles, Hill Topper Cycles, Perfect Wheels, and Wheel & Hammer. 

All shops were included in the calculations for demographic subgroups, and I used a simple mean (average) for these scores. Gender and cultural/ethnic/racial identities are self-identified and respondents chose from pre-set options for age, cyclist type, body type, physical and cognitive disabilities.

2021 Results

SPLAIN 2021 Survey Results

The average rating across the 35 shops included in the survey was 3.54, 0.13 points higher than the average from 2019 (3.41). There were also 105 responses in 2021 as compared to 89 responses in 2019, meaning the average scores per respondent were generally higher. This trend alone would suggest that experiences in shops have gotten at least slightly better in the 2 years since the first survey.

The majority of the shops (55%) had their score go up from 2019 even though most shops (72%) had fewer responses overall than in 2019. Some of the most dramatic changes were for Good Weather, Westside Cycle, Bike Swift and Rad Power Bikes – all of these shops had positive shifts in their scores of 11 to 26 percent. The shift for Bike Swift and Rad Power Bikes especially emphasizes the growing popularity and staying power of e-bikes.

Responses for the Bike Shack, Bike Swift, Evelo, Hampsten Cycles, Hill Topper Cycles, (mend), Perfect Wheels, Seattle BMX, Seattle E-Bike, Wheel and Hammer were removed as there were fewer than 3 responses for each. Hello Bicycles, Mobile Bike Rescue, and WRENCH closed between 2019 and 2021. I forgot about Angle Lake Cyclery, Center for bike Repair, and Shots and Sprockets, but will be sure to include them if I conduct the survey again.

Aaron’s Bike Repair/Rat City Bikes was removed per the owner’s request, but still managed to get negative reviews from survey respondents!

Did I miss Aaron’s Bicycle Repair/Rat City Bikes or whatever he’s calling it these days? I’d love to give that sexist garbage shop a negative rating. 

They're in White Center, but I also dislike Rat City Bikes. They are white guys who are cold, bad at customer service, and pushed more expensive gear on me. 

In my years conducting this survey I have received several messages and had conversations with a number of folks alleging that this shop is an unsafe environment and that the owner has attempted to lock women inside. They also allegedly threatened my collaborator during the last survey after the shop received the lowest rating. In my own experience the owner sent me multiple emails insulting me and my methodology, even after I requested they stop. The whole point of this survey is to make sure people feel comfortable in Seattle bike shops, so I would be remiss if I did not make folks aware of these allegations and my own personal experience.

Demographics

In 2021 I collected demographic data to enhance the understanding of the survey. The number of respondents (105) wasn’t very large, and therefore the sample sizes for each demographic are not very large and don’t constitute very reliable data sources. However, I have included a breakdown of the demographic information collected and the average scores for each. Of course there are respondents who fall into multiple demographic categories (human experience cannot be sorted into buckets!) however, these would create even smaller, and thus less reliable, sample sizes. I want to emphasize that I understand the importance of intersections in identity as these types of overlaps really impact the way people move through white supremacist heteropatriarchal capitalism. For the sake of simplifying data however, I have to relent and sort the respondents into these neat categories:

SPLAIN 2021 Demographic Information

The categories I utilized are a reflection of the language at the time (2021) and I recognize that language shifts with cultural norms. Survey respondents self-identified within the categories provided, I did not provide any guidance/definitions. While the differences between those categories with more societal/cultural privilege and those with less may seem small, they reflect the experience of people with less societal/cultural privilege within white supremacist heteropatriarchal capitalism at large. While bike shops are a discrete place within which to track a cyclist’s/person’s experience, we can all always do better.