# MTBR eBike Survey



## levity (Oct 31, 2011)

In Case you did not see it, MTBR has an official Survey about eBikes:

2018 Mtbr ebike survey - Mountain Bike Review- Mtbr.com


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## alexbn921 (Mar 31, 2009)

Ebikes are not bikes! And yes I own a hybrid ebike that I have used for 8 years.


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## Jim_bo (Jul 31, 2011)

The survey was terrible. It refers only to "eBikes". It is like taking a survey that refers only to "bicycles". Some will take it with class 1 eBikes in mind, others will take it with class 3's or electric dirtbikes in mind and others will think of commuters. Without being clearer about the topic of the survey, the data obtained will be absolutely worthless. I think the admin should delete the survey and try again with something that may produce usable data.


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## leeboh (Aug 5, 2011)

For all purposes, there are no classes. A sticker? Some blue tooth mod?


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## Jim_bo (Jul 31, 2011)

Any discussion about ebikes without specifying class and type seems pointless.


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## Guest (Aug 9, 2018)

I like (not) how once you indicate you would never buy an E-Moped the survey asks what brand of E-Moped you would never buy, what motor it wouldn't have and how much travel it wouldn't have.


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## honkinunit (Aug 6, 2004)

leeboh said:


> For all purposes, there are no classes. A sticker? Some blue tooth mod?


Many states have defined ebike classes. In law.

Your statement makes as much sense as "For all purposes, there are no speed limits. A speedometer? An accelerator?"


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## Harryman (Jun 14, 2011)

Jim_bo said:


> The survey was terrible. It refers only to "eBikes". It is like taking a survey that refers only to "bicycles". Some will take it with class 1 eBikes in mind, others will take it with class 3's or electric dirtbikes in mind and others will think of commuters. Without being clearer about the topic of the survey, the data obtained will be absolutely worthless. I think the admin should delete the survey and try again with something that may produce usable data.


Agreed


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## richj8990 (Apr 4, 2017)

I think everyone is missing the point about the survey. It appears to try and gauge a GENERAL FEELING by the members on this site of their thoughts and feelings about e-bikes. It may deliberately have been made general instead of specific. Because if it was specific, then we are back to the same arguments on here that never end. You guys do understand that, right? The survey wanted to take a step back and gauge a general feeling about any e-bike from an MTB'rs perspective. They wanted to see the overall percentage of good feeling vs. bad feeling from mountain bikers about all e-bikes. That makes it a good survey, not a bad one, because it collected the data it was designed to collect. It just didn't collect the data many of you wanted it to collect. You are free to make your own poll...


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## life behind bars (May 24, 2014)

richj8990 said:


> I think everyone is missing the point about the survey. It appears to try and gauge a GENERAL FEELING by the members on this site of their thoughts and feelings about e-bikes. It may deliberately have been made general instead of specific. Because if it was specific, then we are back to the same arguments on here that never end. You guys do understand that, right? The survey wanted to take a step back and gauge a general feeling about any e-bike from an MTB'rs perspective. They wanted to see the overall percentage of good feeling vs. bad feeling from mountain bikers about all e-bikes. That makes it a good survey, not a bad one, because it collected the data it was designed to collect. It just didn't collect the data many of you wanted it to collect. You are free to make your own poll...


They needn't ask e-motorbike specific questions to accomplish that, so I think you missed the point.


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## Klurejr (Oct 13, 2006)

Jim_bo said:


> The survey was terrible. It refers only to "eBikes". It is like taking a survey that refers only to "bicycles". Some will take it with class 1 eBikes in mind, others will take it with class 3's or electric dirtbikes in mind and others will think of commuters. Without being clearer about the topic of the survey, the data obtained will be absolutely worthless. I think the admin should delete the survey and try again with something that may produce usable data.


Agreed, also the pop-ups are horrible. I PM'd the admin about the pop-ups so they can hopefully stop that. I don't know if they will alter the content of the survey.


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## Cuyuna (May 14, 2017)

Heh...nothing is valid about e-bikes, right? Not even a poll to try to ascertain how bad people think they are . It sounds like some people are pissed that the poll didn't give them enough opportunity to really slam e-bikes. The only valid poll would be:

E-bikes are:
bad
really bad
really really bad
awful


Right?

Actually, I thought it was a pretty good poll that should provide the admins with a reasonably good reflection of what role, objectively, electric-assist mountain bikes should play on this particular mountain biking discussion forum.


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## Harold (Dec 23, 2003)

Cuyuna said:


> Heh...nothing is valid about e-bikes, right? Not even a poll to try to ascertain how bad people think they are . It sounds like some people are pissed that the poll didn't give them enough opportunity to really slam e-bikes. The only valid poll would be:
> 
> E-bikes are:
> bad
> ...


Conditional questions are the biggest things I see poll creators (in general) screw up. Tons of opportunities to seek additional detail regarding a specific response. No need to ask people who hate ebikes about ebike components. As you can see, that caused a number of people to abandon the survey. But there might be other questions you can ask those folks to tease out why they feel the way they do...questions you don't need to ask other people.

There are pretty detailed courses and seminars you can take to learn how to create really good polls. And now that surveymonkey and other pre-baked poll services exist, people don't bother to learn, and you get a proliferation of bad polls.

Sent from my VS995 using Tapatalk


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## chazpat (Sep 23, 2006)

Harold said:


> Conditional questions are the biggest things I see poll creators (in general) screw up. Tons of opportunities to seek additional detail regarding a specific response. No need to ask people who hate ebikes about ebike components. As you can see, that caused a number of people to abandon the survey. But there might be other questions you can ask those folks to tease out why they feel the way they do...questions you don't need to ask other people.
> 
> There are pretty detailed courses and seminars you can take to learn how to create really good polls. And now that surveymonkey and other pre-baked poll services exist, people don't bother to learn, and you get a proliferation of bad polls.
> 
> Sent from my VS995 using Tapatalk


Yep, amazes me how bad most polls are. This one was no exception.


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## tahoebeau (May 11, 2014)

leeboh said:


> For all purposes, there are no classes. A sticker? Some blue tooth mod?





Jim_bo said:


> Any discussion about ebikes without specifying class and type seems pointless.





honkinunit said:


> Many states have defined ebike classes. In law.
> 
> Your statement makes as much sense as "For all purposes, there are no speed limits. A speedometer? An accelerator?"


A few states do and the class system irrelevant in those states since there is no way to enforce the class rules. The class system only works on paper, not the real world. So as leeboh points out for all purposes, there are no classes.

And why would there be any that works? We don't have different classes for mtbs and only allow certain types (classes) on certain trails. We could and say have a class 1 be a rigid mtb, class 2 be a HT and class 3 be a full squish since it is a lot easier to go faster on a full squish than a rigid. But we don't because that is stupid, just like classes for ebikes.

It's either an ebike or itis not an ebike. Those are the only two options that work in the real world.


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## mtnbikej (Sep 6, 2001)

Harold said:


> Conditional questions are the biggest things I see poll creators (in general) screw up. Tons of opportunities to seek additional detail regarding a specific response. No need to ask people who hate ebikes about ebike components. As you can see, that caused a number of people to abandon the survey. But there might be other questions you can ask those folks to tease out why they feel the way they do...questions you don't need to ask other people.
> 
> There are pretty detailed courses and seminars you can take to learn how to create really good polls. And now that surveymonkey and other pre-baked poll services exist, people don't bother to learn, and you get a proliferation of bad polls.
> 
> Sent from my VS995 using Tapatalk


That is because most polls are worded so the author attains the results they want to get....not necessarily the acutally results.


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## Guest (Aug 10, 2018)

mtnbikej said:


> That is because most polls are worded so the author attains the results they want to get....not necessarily the acutally results.


My graduate stats class was warned about this before the final projects were turned in. We were told to ensure our device measured a result, rather than prove our theory of what was going on. It's difficult because you come to any project with your own bias and it migrates into your work in little ways.


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## chazpat (Sep 23, 2006)

wtf, I'm getting pop-ups today! They aren't actually new windows, just overlays on some of the threads.


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## bme107 (Jul 23, 2008)

Is there a way to see the results? (i've previously blocked all pop-ups, so maybe that's the key.)


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## life behind bars (May 24, 2014)

bme107 said:


> Is there a way to see the results?


No.


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