How SwimVox works - Visitor research, participation fee and reporting

The study is designed to survey the visitors to your pool. Visitors are people who have visited your pool in the past 12 months: swimmers, but also those who come along without using the core offer themselves, such as parents accompanying their children.

If you wish, you can also involve lapsed visitors (who have not visited for more than 12 months) and non-visitors (who have never been). The dynamic survey recognises these profiles and shows them only the questions that are relevant to them. Separate communication materials are provided for these groups.

The survey is available in four languages. You choose which languages you offer; the number of languages has no effect on the participation fee.

The study is based on a well-balanced questionnaire, designed specifically for public swimming pools in collaboration with academic partners, sector organisations and professionals from the swimming pool sector. The questionnaire follows a European standard, adapted to the national context of each country.

Before the study starts, you can use the research platform to provide the characteristics of your pool, add extra questions, remove questions or answer options that are not relevant, and personalise questions, for example about the activities in your pool. The research team then develops a fully personalised survey, while anonymous benchmarking against other pools remains possible.

The survey system is dynamic and intelligent: based on the respondent’s profile and answers, only the relevant questions are shown. That way, lapsed visitors and non-visitors can be included in the same survey, with questions adapted to them.

The study is supported by academics from several universities and research centres, including the Mulier Instituut and Ghent University. They worked together on a balanced questionnaire that is used in all participating countries, and ensured that the European standard was adapted to the national context of each country.

National sector organisations and representatives from the field contributed to the development and evaluation of the questionnaire. At the end of the study, an overarching analysis is carried out in each country on the basis of anonymised results. In addition to your personalised report, every participating pool also receives these national and European reports.

More than 300 pools have already taken part and more than 45,000 visitors have shared their opinion. Around 80 percent of respondents complete the questionnaire in full, an exceptionally high result for quantitative research.

The study results in an extensive individual research report with practical, usable insights for your pool. The report provides detailed information on your own results and lets you compare them anonymously with a cluster of similar pools in your country and across Europe.

Clusters are groups of pools, put together on the basis of characteristics such as size, offer and location. That way your results are compared with comparable pools, while your data always remains anonymous.

Your report is confidential: only your pool receives the individual results. You may publish your own results if you wish. You also get access to a live dashboard with filters, cross-tabulations and charts, which you can consult at any time via a personal login, during and after the research period.

Registration is open all year round. After registering, you choose the most suitable moment to involve your visitors and communicate about the study. You can run the study over a longer period or choose specific time windows that fit the way your pool operates.

At the end of the study, you receive your personalised research report. You also have continuous access to your live dashboard.

The study is carried out in accordance with the European GDPR. No personal data is collected from respondents at any time: the survey is completely anonymous and answers cannot be traced back to an individual. Winners of the incentives receive a unique code to contact the research team themselves; only their contact details are stored temporarily in order to deliver the prize.

For each participating pool, we ask for the contact details of one responsible person: name and email address, used exclusively for communication about the study and access to the platform. You can request, update or delete these details at any time, and give additional responsible persons access.

Your research results remain confidential at all times and are shared only with the contact persons you designate. For sector-wide learning, the results of all participating pools are anonymised and aggregated in cluster analyses. All data is stored on secure servers within the European Union.