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| Hello all yoga enthusiasts,
My colleagues and I at the University of Houston (Department of Psychology) have developed a study that applies to many of you who have made your hobby into a some form of business or job. This study aims to find out more about people who make their hobbies into any job - whether it is part-time, full-time, or freelance. We hope the results will enable us to make recommendations to those who have taken "doing what you love" to a whole new level so that they may continue doing so!
We have posted a short anonymous survey - it takes about 10-15 minutes to complete - at the following link:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=x74gbHw5K_2fuiCbl3yWHnUA_3d_3d
You can respond anytime until Friday, Dec 14th.
Yoga was the original inspiration for this study, so we hope many of you involved in yoga as teachers or some other form will respond. We will share the results of the study on this forum after we close the survey.
If you have any questions, please send me a message.
Thanks in advance!
Sara J. Perry
Industrial/Organizational Psychology
University of Houston
skj02@yahoo.com
This study has been approved by the University of Houston Committee for the Protection of Human Subjects (1-713-743-9204).
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| Is psychology a "hobby". Chiropractic? Physical Therapy?
Stamp collecting is a hobby, yoga inherently is not.
Likely those taking it seriously enough to teach it would not be doing so because it was a hobby. The corollary is that those that "do" yoga as a hobby would not be likely to pursue teaching it.
Edited by purnayoga 2007-12-10 11:40 AM
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| Good point. It depends on how seriously it is integrated into your identity and your life, I suppose. The yoga instructors that inspired me to do this study all started out as students of yoga, and after a short time became teachers. For these people, I'm not sure yoga was more than another hobby, until it became a job. There is a fine line between a hobby and a passion, and some would argue they are one in the same. Depends on your definition of hobby, I suppose. But it's definitely an interesting point for debate.
As for this study, it's up to the respondent to determine if the activity was a hobby to them or not. I'm intentionally leaving it open to interpretation.
Thanks for the thoughts!
Sara |
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| i wouldn't say it is a "hobby" for me, but i also don't think that it being a "hobby" is a problem.
anyway, i took the survey. |
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| I don't think I would want to learn Yoga (note: capital Y) from a teacher for whom yoga was a hobby. I would not mind taking Reebok Step or Tai Bo or Buns of Steel from someone for whom those things were a hobby.
If my house were ablaze I would dread a firefighting crew for whom firefighting was a hobby.
But I digress...after looking through the U of H web site and scanning the net (where this survey shows up just about everywhere) it appears as though it is legit. I bring this up not as a result of my own paranoia, which doesn't mean you're not out to get me, but because this forum is occasionally the target of marketeers masquerading as graduate students.
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| Yes, the classes I've taken from those for whom yoga is more of a hobby are definitely not as fulfilling as those taught by true yogis. Although now I've been doing yoga approximately 7 years, so I have found that even the less experienced new teachers have something to offer, as long as I take the next step internally in the practice. Actually this would be a interesting conversation for another thread....I may do that....
And yes, the survey is legit, and I am truly a graduate student. In my 4th year, in fact...almost finished!  I understand the paranoia, though, since it is a scam-laden internet world. But this is not a scam or spam, I promise.
We have tried to target hobby forums in which someone in our research team had some interest, so we've posted on a number of yoga, pilot, kayaking, dance, and photography forums. But this is an attempt at survey sampling that we haven't done before, so we'll see how it works out. So far we've gotten some good responses and some that are obviously not taken seriously. As for us, we have a serious interest in this topic and look forward to sharing the results.
Thanks again to all who have taken it. I encourage more of you to check it out, if it applies to you!
Take care,
Sara |
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| how do you know if a responder is "not taking it seriously?"
i noticed that a lot of my answers were "repetitive" in certain areas (disagree, agree, or what have you), and i hope it wouldn't be cast out because of that. Also, my birthday and year's practicing are often off putting to some. i was born in 1976, and i say that i've been practicing for 26 years. I count since i was 4/5 when i remember practicing. |
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Expert Yogi
Posts: 8442
    
| "Avocation" is a better word than hobby, perhaps  |
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| Not to worry - people that aren't taking it seriously are very obvious. They typically leave a lot of the survey blank and write in random responses that are obviously jokes. We don't throw any responses out unless we're very sure they are bad data.
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| Hi all -
Thanks again for your participation in our survey. The number of responses has been exciting, and we really appreciate your time in contributing to this study! The survey will remain open until at least January 8th, because we have other groups still participating. So if you have not responded and still want to, you may do so anytime until January 8th.
However, because we set the deadline as last Friday, we wanted to give you an update on when you'll see the results. This week we will analyze the responses we have received so far. We will share those results the first week of January here on this forum. These results will also go into a short conference paper we are writing.
After January 8th we will download the rest of the survey responses and write up our final results for a longer journal article. These final results should be ready by the end of January; we will also share these with you on this forum.
Let me know if you have any questions, and thanks again for participating! We hope we can provide some valuable recommendations to help you.
-Sara |
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Expert Yogi
Posts: 8442
| Thanks Sara - this has sparked some interesting discussion, so along with your work, it has been pretty productive! |
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| Sara,
As a former prospective psychology grad student-turned yoga instructor I am pleased to see this research! Prior to my decision to change my career, I was planning my dissertation to be centered around investigating yoga and how it affects people's quality of life. I'm excited to see the results of your study! Best of luck to you! |
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| The preliminary results are in! As survey respondents learned at the end of the survey, we were primarily interested in what factors lead to burnout when people turn a hobby into some type of job. Our interest in this topic came from direct observation of a number of people who had experienced burnout in a job that came from a hobby, so much so that they also quit the hobby. We hope these results will help prevent that particular outcome for others.
These preliminary results include 269 complete responses to our online survey. We do not claim these results are entirely representative of every person, hobby, or hobby-job. However, respondents represented 22 categories of hobby-jobs and 16 categories of hobbies, so we feel the results are reliable and potentially helpful to any person with a hobby-job.
We will share the final results at the end of January, with more respondents and more complex statistical analyses. Meanwhile, we hope the 2 lists below are helpful as you evaluate yourself and your current level of burnout. Very encouraging, the overall average burnout level was only ‘2’ on a scale of 1 – 7 (where ‘7’ reflects highest level of burnout).
Thank you again for your time! Please direct any questions to skjansen@uh.edu.
Factors that ARE related to burnout
1) Personality: You are less likely to become burned out if you are:
-- Emotionally Stable
-- Conscientious
-- Extraverted
-- Agreeable
-- Less Spontaneous or Reckless
2) Job Characteristics: You are less likely to become burned out if your job has:
-- More Clarity (you know when, what, and how to do your job)
-- More Autonomy (more independence in your job)
-- More Variety (less monotony or repetition)
-- More Similarity to your hobby
-- Less Constraints (such as those that limit your ability do your job, like time, resources, coworkers, or supervisors)
-- Less Difficulty in earning pay (less competition, less time required to earn money)
-- Met your Expectations
-- More Benefits (other than pay)
3) Attitudes: You are less likely to be burned out if you are…
-- More satisfied with your pay, work, and boss
-- Not thinking about quitting your hobby-job within the next 12 months.
-- Less stressed about life in general.
4) Values: Your are less likely to be burned out if you feel…
-- Your values are compatible with those of others in your hobby-job profession.
Contrary to our expectations, there were a number of factors NOT related to burnout in hobby-jobs. They are:
1) Intrinsic Motivation (internal reasons for doing the job, as compared to external reasons like pay or fringe benefits).
2) Intentions to Quit your Hobby within the next 12 months
3) Time spent on Hobby and Hobby-Job:
-- Time spent on hobby before taking hobby-job compared to time spent on hobby after taking hobby-job
-- Time spent on hobby after taking hobby-job compared to time spent on hobby-job
-- Number of hours spent on hobby-job
4) Demographics:
-- Age
-- Gender
-- Ethnicity
-- Breadwinner characteristics:
--> What percentage of your household income comes from your hobby-job
--> Gross income from hobby-job
--> Number of dependents
--> Whether hobby-job is your primary job
--> Whether you are the primary breadwinner in your household
-- How many years you have been doing the hobby
-- How many years you have been doing the hobby-job
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Survey for Yoga Instructors
