About the Survey

Who Took the Survey?

The majority of survey participants were people who took the class after 1983.

I had a large group of women from when Scribner first began the class, between 1968-73. But after that initial cohort, I have a dearth of participants until fall of 1983. I attribute this hole to methods of finding participants: Most were found via social media or word of mouth. Also, all forms of participating in the research was digital, which probably lent itself to younger generations of participants.

Who Took the Survey?

The majority of survey participants are female.

I had 66 survey respondents in total, 61 of whom described themselves as female.* Only 5 survey participants were male.

*All female participants identified as female while taking the class. While some participants said later they find it hard to use certain descriptors associated with femininity, only 1 used non-binary descriptors later. No male participants indicated changes of gender identity.

Was the Class Coed When You Took It?

Most survey participants were in a coed class.

The class ran for over 40 years. In the beginning, the class was women-only. All 7 participants from 1968-73 were in the women-only class. After Title IX, the class was coed. However, that does not mean there was gender parity in participation. Per survey responses and interview conversations,* it was only in the final few years that the class had equal amounts of men and women. In general, the class had only 2-5 men and a large majority of women. In fact, there were several later class years that were women only, despite being co-ed and open to both men and women.

*These statistics are not corroborated with Wheaton registration/attendance records, as the school declined official participation in this research project.

About the Survey:

The survey was designed to take roughly 15-20 minutes, but might have taken longer.

It was broken into a series of short sections focusing on different aspects of participants' experience: What kind of self-defense was taught, participants' overall memories of the class, their gendered experience (if the the class was co-ed when they took it), their Christian experience, etc. It then shifted to reflective questions centered around how they attribute the class impacting their lives, such as increasing self-confidence and self-worth, reflections on embodiment and power, and decisions to act for themselves in dangerous situations. It ended with questions centered around such instances where they might have needed to use what they learned in class to defend themselves or others.

Each section was between 3 and 19 questions. Most questions were multiple choice, with the option to add comments and write in longer responses. The responses gathered from these write-in areas were highly insightful and added depth and meaning to the multiple-choice options. Much of my analysis will be drawn from these long-form responses.

Participants said as much or as little as they'd like about any of the topics.

Of course, the more details shared, the more accurate this research project is. However, it has been a while since anyone has taken this class, and participants have forgotten many things. "I don't remember" was a perfectly valid response! In addition, some topics were more sensitive than others, and participants always had an option to skip any question or respond with "prefer not to answer."