CCLA Survey

Last year the Correspondence Chess League of Australia sent out a survey form, in part to find out where the League was at, both in terms of demographics, and in terms of whether it was meeting membership needs.
For an organisation with a membership of a little over 300, a surprisingly large number of 90 forms were returned, with some interesting results (NB Self selecting surveys should be taken with a pinch of salt).
The result that jumped out at me straight off was the age of the members. 86% of members are aged 50 years or older. This can probably be explained in generational/technical terms (ie pre and post internet chess players), but probably also explains the steady decline in CCLA membership over the last decade. Connected with this figure are breakdown of professions (56% retired), and the decade when players began playing CC (the 1970's at 31% being the largest)
In terms of utilising 'modern' technology, there is a still a large percentage (>60%) who both prefer to play CC via post (rather than webserver or email), and to recieve the League's magazine ACCQ in printed form.
And speaking of ACCQ (of which I am the current editor), there are plenty of suggestions about what the members want to see in the magazine (problem pages, educational articles, player profiles etc) and I will be looking at adding those to future issues.