Having completed the student-oriented portion of the BRDS, the instructors are next. First, the perpetual reminder that the respondent pool for this survey is biased toward instructors with significant experience.
Respondents that indicated they did teach dance classes were presented with a satisfaction matrix. “Please indicate your satisfaction with your current instruction venue for each of the following” and given a range of 5 options (Ranked 0 to 4 – Extremely dissatisfied, Somewhat dissatisfied, Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, Somewhat satisfied, Extremely satisfied). Five categories were presented:
Cost (e.g., Rental fees, Extra charges)
Availability (e.g., Operating hours, Scheduling conflicts)
Quality (e.g., Cleanliness, Staff, Facility)
Amenities (e.g., Sound system, Dressing area)
Access to services (e.g., Wellness, Food)
55 Respondents completed this question. Let’s bang these out in order:
When it comes to cost, we have one much-suffering instructor in the pool of respondents, but in general, respondent instructors are on the satisfied side of neutral (Average = 2.44, σ = 1.06).
Availability comes in just about the same as Cost – our respondents are still slightly positive, if a bit more varied in their opinions (Average = 2.42, σ = 1.23).
Studio Quality came in just a bit higher than Cost and Availability (Average = 2.51, σ = 1.28).
Studio Amenities also came in about the same (Average = 2.27, σ = 1.20).
But in the realm of services, the consistency breaks down just a bit and we’re on the dissatisfied side of neutral (Average = 1.91, σ = 0.96).
While we’re here, let’s go ahead and add up the whole mess and see how it sorts out. It’s pretty consistent through all the questions, so this isn’t going to shock anyone:
To some extent, I’m sure that the respondent pool bias toward older and more experienced instructors plays into both the consistency and the overall satisfaction reported. We are generally looking at instructors with long careers, and they’ve had some time to fix the challenges they have faced when it comes to the studios with which they decide to work. It will be interesting to see if less-experienced instructors maintain this pattern.
Before we run away from this question, how do the individual respondent experiences differ? Fortunately, nobody responded with “Extremely Dissatisfied” in all categories. One respondent did pick “Extremely Dissatisfied” in all categories except Cost, and another in all categories except Cost and Availability, so there are at least two much-suffering instructors in the area. At the opposite end of the spectrum, two respondents were “Extremely Satisfied” in all categories, and one in all categories except Services. The lowest-possible combined score is still 0, but the highest-possible combined score is 20 (Reporting “Extremely Satisfied” in all five categories). The whole thing looks like this:
It looks like there are 7 respondents that really need some help with their instructional spaces. While I’m mostly sticking to the data here, if any of those much-suffering instructors feels like reaching out, I’m happy to help work the specific problems where possible.
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