BorisBeckerFan
Professional
I work in the advertising/graphics industry. We conducted a focus group for various local car dealers. Just in case some aren't aware, a focus group is not a scientific poll with large groups to draw solid conclusions but rather like dropping a leaf to see what the wind is doing. We brought in 11 people who were looking to purchase a vehicle within in the next 3 months and asked various questions like who would you buy from and why. Which dealership seems honest etc. I printed out a couple of the GOAT threads and brought them with me. At the end of the group I asked if they would be willing to stay another 10 to 15 minutes and read through the threads and answer some quick questions. Not surprisingly 3 of them immediately said they would not have the time. After handing out the copies one of them said "I love Pete Sampras" I said thank you for your time I would like to get the point of view of people who don't follow tennis. That only left me with 7 people. 5 male and 2 female. 3 to 4 minutes into it one of the men said "these people are all childish, I don't have time for this." I said you are welcome to leave at anytime since it is not the focus session you agreed to participate in. Down to 6.
Once they were done reading. I asked them if they thought Pete Sampras or Roger Federer was the better player. 3 said Pete 2 said Federer and one said he was undecided caliming both sides made good arguments. Throughout the brief session people asked things like what does GOAT mean and what is S&V. I already felt bad for wasting these peoples time as it was running a little longer than I anticipated but they seemed willing. I asked what they thought of BorisBeckerFan. 2 said he was a clown. The rest didn't really have much of an opinion one said "if what he's saying is true, he makes a good point but I really don't know"
I wanted to ask more questions but I chose not too keep abusing there time.
There really wasn't as much to be drawn from the session as I had hoped for a lack of time and lack of participants. At most, and this is a stretch, you could say "to non tennis fans who don't know if the stats that are given are factual or not, Sampras supporters made a stronger case than Federer supporters by a margin of 3 to 2." Out of the countless stats that have been tossed out in these threads the one stat which seemed to pop out the most to them was Fed's record vs Nadal. 4 of them pretty much came up to same conclusion that it makes no sense to be the best ever when someone else is beating you most of the time. Yet one of those 4 remained undecided. I guess a Fed supporter must have said something pretty compelling to avoid this being 4 to 2 Sampras. I have no idea what these people's reading comprehenssion level is or what biases they might have. They only read through the copies once and didn't really have a chance to digest it all so this just there general impression. I personally would have thought the fact that Federer had beat Pete in there only meeting or that Pete had 14 slams would have been the most significant sats that would have stood out but nope it was Fed's head to head aginst Nadal that seemed to have the greatest impact.
This was in no way shape or form scientific but I did try my best to keep my explanations to any questions they had simple with out favoring one or the other and just presented the blog as is.Had this taken this not taken twice the amount of time I had told them I would have liked to find out more about why they answered the way they did.
Despite this not being of much value at all I did find the little it revealed interesting in regards to what non tennis fans thought after reading these threads. I personally think that Roger's and Pete's accomplishments stand well on their own. This is also a stretch but it could also be said that to outsiders looking in Nadal is spoiling the show for Federer.
Once they were done reading. I asked them if they thought Pete Sampras or Roger Federer was the better player. 3 said Pete 2 said Federer and one said he was undecided caliming both sides made good arguments. Throughout the brief session people asked things like what does GOAT mean and what is S&V. I already felt bad for wasting these peoples time as it was running a little longer than I anticipated but they seemed willing. I asked what they thought of BorisBeckerFan. 2 said he was a clown. The rest didn't really have much of an opinion one said "if what he's saying is true, he makes a good point but I really don't know"
I wanted to ask more questions but I chose not too keep abusing there time.
There really wasn't as much to be drawn from the session as I had hoped for a lack of time and lack of participants. At most, and this is a stretch, you could say "to non tennis fans who don't know if the stats that are given are factual or not, Sampras supporters made a stronger case than Federer supporters by a margin of 3 to 2." Out of the countless stats that have been tossed out in these threads the one stat which seemed to pop out the most to them was Fed's record vs Nadal. 4 of them pretty much came up to same conclusion that it makes no sense to be the best ever when someone else is beating you most of the time. Yet one of those 4 remained undecided. I guess a Fed supporter must have said something pretty compelling to avoid this being 4 to 2 Sampras. I have no idea what these people's reading comprehenssion level is or what biases they might have. They only read through the copies once and didn't really have a chance to digest it all so this just there general impression. I personally would have thought the fact that Federer had beat Pete in there only meeting or that Pete had 14 slams would have been the most significant sats that would have stood out but nope it was Fed's head to head aginst Nadal that seemed to have the greatest impact.
This was in no way shape or form scientific but I did try my best to keep my explanations to any questions they had simple with out favoring one or the other and just presented the blog as is.Had this taken this not taken twice the amount of time I had told them I would have liked to find out more about why they answered the way they did.
Despite this not being of much value at all I did find the little it revealed interesting in regards to what non tennis fans thought after reading these threads. I personally think that Roger's and Pete's accomplishments stand well on their own. This is also a stretch but it could also be said that to outsiders looking in Nadal is spoiling the show for Federer.