Being a survey on Personas
Marc Carlson
IMC at vax2.utulsa.edu
Wed Jun 26 09:33:05 PDT 1996
Since I'm about to go away for vacation for a few days, I thought
I'd go ahead and compile this and send it off. Please feel free to
pass it along to anyone be interested.
=============================================================
# Reponding: (130, which is a little light for a valid survey, but
a LOT more than I was expecting.
1. Do you have a persona history? 91.5% Yes
(I will point out that the minority position of having NO
persona history was held by a really fascinating array of
individuals)
2. Have you changed or altered that history to reflect any SCA
titles? 14.6% Yes
(5.4% of the total specifically said that they had some
variation of their persona for use at Demos that is NOT
changed to reflect their SCA titles)
3. Do you feel that your SCA titles reflect what could have been
awarded in plausible mundane history? 53% Yes
(It should be noted that 13% either had no opinion, or felt
that the question was inapplicable because they had no such
awards)
(As an interesting point of trivia, over 50% responding
specifically mentioned that they had no awards at all; while
less than 10% indicated (in this survey or elsewhere) that
they held some form of peerage award)
4. According to your persona's "back story" was your persona
born:
a. A peasant or cotter? 1.5% (1.4%)
b. A villein or slave? 0% (0%)
c. The child of a noble? (if so, please specify, the first
born, or other)" 48% (of whom 38% were not first
born). (44%)
d. The child of the merchant (or similar "middle Class"
background)? 34.6% (31.7%)
(Freeman or Gentry?) 9% (8.2%)
e. Into some nomadic or pastoral people?
10.7% (9.8%)
f. Undecided or n/a 4.6% (4.2%)
(The more inquisitive may notice that this adds up to equal
108.4%. This oddity is a result of people giving more than
one answer in an attempt to fit their histories to fit the
survey, which is my fault for not inserting more leeway into
the responses. The figures adjusted for the other total
appear in parentheses.)
5. According to your persona's "back story" was your persona:
a. An orphan? 6.2%
b. Adopted? 5.4%
c. Kidnapped by Gypsies/Mongols/Vikings (or any other
nomadic people)? 3.8%
d. Fostered out to some Noble in a different Kingdom?
16.2%
e. Raised by own Family 5.4%
f. None of the Above 19.2%
g. Not known 15.4%
(This of course only adds up to 71.6%, which is due to
something like 27.5% of the respondents leaving this section
blank. My assumption is that these would fall under catagories
f&g, giving those a combined total of 62%. These figures have
already been adjusted for multiple responses.)
6. According to your persona's backstory, have "you" ever
(n.b., the following figures are NOT cumulative):
a. Been on Crusade? 9.2%
b. Been on Pilgrimage? 14.6%
c. Been on raiding parties to plunder distant
settlements? 13%
d. Traveled more than a few days from place born, for any
reason? 24.7% yes (unspecific)
27% no (specific)
Of the "yes" responses:
--Military service 7.2% (includes mercenary service as
well as more mundane services)
--Family Thing 6.3%
--Wandering scholar 5.4%
--Faires or Merchant 4.9%
--Noble Obligations 4.5%
--Wandering or Vagabondage
3.1%
--Apprent'd/Convent 2.2%
--Performer/Musician 1.8%
--Royal Ambassador 1.3%
--Enslavement 1.3%
--Tournies 1.3%
--Escaping persecution 0.9%
--Shipwrecked then wandering
0.4%
--Cultural Migration 0.4%
--Because he's Japanese 0.4%
(I'm not making fun of this, but it was pointed out by
one gentleman that since he was Japanese, and by SCA
definition, Japanese are visitors to Europe, he must have
traveled to get there.)
--Misc. other reason 6.7%
7. Has your persona ever belonged to a specific mundane
historical group? 34.6% (These included Clans, the
Horde, Holy Orders, particular Armies.)
7a. Does your persona STILL belong to this group?
17.7% still do
8. What year (or century) was your persona born in?
100-500 0.8%
600-700 1.6%
700-800 0.8%
800-900 16.5%
900-1000 3.1%
1000-1100 13.8%
1100-1200 13.8%
1200-1300 16.2%
1300-1400 13.8%
1400-1500 11.5%
1500-1600 22.3%
Unknown 1.6%
c1000 1.6%
1000-1500 1.6%
1100-1300 0.8%
1350-1450 0.8%
1400-1600 0.8%
Nobody was born after 1600.
9. Does your persona have more than two ethnic influences in its
origin? 22.3% have more than 2 such influences. Of these:
3 65.5%
4 20.6%
5 6.9%
6 3.4%
7 3.4%
10. Do you have more than one persona?
26% yes
Of these:
2 75.5%
3 14.7%
4 8.9%
5 2.9%
Interpretation and General Impressions:
Recognizing that this survey almost entirely was answered by people
who received it by some form of e-mail, it may be possible to draw
some general conclusions about the Personas used by people in the
Society for Creative Anachronism. It is entirely possible that the
percentages would be different if the entire Society at large were
polled, or if there is some significant subset of the population
who refused to respond, therefore, it may be assumed only that this
survey is valid for measuring the population that responded, and,
with some risk of error, the "Netted" portion of the Society. I
*was* pleased, by the rather large number of people who replied who
have nothing to do with the Rialto, since I am only too aware of
the opinions of SCA-L/Rec.Org.SCA held by many people who refuse to
have anything to do with it (for whatever reason).
1. One's persona history, or lack thereof, can be heavily
influenced by mundane things such as where you live, or
when you joined. This is in no way an absolute, but
there appears to be a greater emphasis on such things for
people who have spent less time in the Society while the
older, more established people (and regions) place less
of an emphasis on this sort of thing.
2. There is a far greater percentage of people of non-Noble
origin than can be really be accounted for, if we take a
strict interpretation of the "lesser noble" idea of
Personae, particularly when you take into account how
many people have no awards.
3. It is fairly plain that my principle inherent hypothesis,
that the majority of people in the Society have what
could be interpreted as "twinkie", is totally wrong.
There are a very small percentage of persona histories
that step over the line into implausibility (up to the
point where they start to interact with the Society's
milieux, and that is something beyond the scope of this
instrument). The greater majority of Persona's seem to
be based firmly in Historical possibilities, and for any
insult I may have generated my opinions that "most
persona stories" are pretty stupid, I sincerely
apologize.
4. My secondary inherent hypothesis, that people in the SCA
*travel* in their persona histories far more than their
historical counterparts "would" have done, remains as yet
unproven. This survey was started specifically to
collect data regarding this point, the data gathered does
tend to support the assumption that SCA personas travel
a LOT, with only 27% never having traveled more than six
days worth from their home (and most of those appear to
have never been further than the few miles to the local
Market or nearest "big" Town). It appears from the
material gathered that most of those who remain at home
are mostly, in fact, personas that are lower class and/or
women.
5. Those personas that travel, generally do so for reasons
that are appear perfectly plausible, although there is a
lower level of tribal movement and cultural migration
than I might have assumed based on the periods covered.
6. An interesting side note to the whole controversy on
when and where the SCA cut-off dates should be, are, and
so forth, the greatest percentage of the population in
the SCA appears to have been in the 16th Century, with
almost a quarter of the total. The largest bulk of the
population, however, does tend towards the "Middle Ages",
with over 57% having been born between 1000 and 1400.
There is an expected (to me at least) peak in the 9th
century, but I was somewhat (foolishly perhaps) surprised
by how early people had begun with (I believe the 100-500
representations were Romano-British of the 5th century as
a whole).
7. Most people retain only one persona. The quarter of the
populace that has more than one often retains a secondary
to give them an excuse to wear other clothing for the
summer, or as a party mask. There are, I believe, two
cases in which one persona is, in fact, hunting the
second. There were also two cases in which the person
only had ONE persona, but that persona had multiple
identities (these counted as a single persona).
I hope this is of some interest, and thank you for your indulgence.
"Fides res non pecunniae, Diarmuit Ui Dhuinn
sed temporis" University of Northkeep/Company of St. Jude
-- Unknown Recreator Northkeepshire, Ansteorra
(I. Marc Carlson/IMC at vax2.utulsa.edu)
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