I’m a TD and am doing a report for a statistics class on what factors increase and decrease OTB chess engagement in a region. I’m using USCF membership as a proxy for this. Currently, I’m using email blasts to get numbers on memberships per city, and using expiration dates to chart this over time. However, recording the data is simply extremely clunky. The data is also not precise, as expirations don’t translate 1:1 to signups. Would it be possible to get USCF membership data by city? Even better if it’s possible to see that data for many years.
I have the membership data by state that was posted on these forums, but would love more precision then that.
I totally understand if I’m not able to be given access to this data, could I make a query for some numbers if that’s the case?
I’ll share my results here when I do finish the report if you all would be interested!
I hope you can understand that we cannot provide non-public information about individual members except under controlled research conditions. This includes address information other than state, birthdates and email addresses.
Even city information if sufficiently detailed can leak membership information.
You will need to contact the national office with a research proposal through your instructor, who should be familiar with the research protocols normally followed at your educational institution. Our ratings committee and its chair, Prof. Mark Glickman of Harvard, act as our Institutional Review Board (IRB) for research data requests.
You can contact our Executive Director, Ranae Bartlett, and Prof. Glickman by email.
Depending on what information you request access to, there may be a programming charge for any staff time it takes to prepare the data set.
Oh that’s totally understandable! The membership data through the email blast system and by state is good enough for now. I’ll talk with my Professor and get a proposal worked on later down the road.
TDs by state can be pulled if you have access (you need to be logged into USCF and in an affiliate context, which generally means you need to be a TD) to the TD/Affiliate support area (while you can also search within 150 miles of a zip code, that hides any TD that has chosen to hide their address from third parties, which based on the recent “oral history project” is over half of the TDs now) at US Chess Federation
I don’t think TDs not making their city or contact information visible has much to do with the Oral History project, because those capabilities go back at least 15 years, and the percentage of members who have requested their address be confidential is lower today than it was in July of 2020.
I’m not even sure there’s a way for TDs to update their contact information these days. (The ‘Do Not Trade’ field in the member profile is what determines if a member is included in mailing lists for 3rd parties or on the list of TDs within 150 miles.)
You’ve certainly got more visibility than I do; I just anecdotally know that there are some Louisiana TDs that used to show as within 150 miles of me that no longer show up but are still active, at least one of whom switched the Do Not Trade option in the last 2 months.
This is not great to learn, though; what is the process if a TD changes state these days?
I’ve asked the development team about the contact field, but nobody seems to have complained about an inability to update it in 4 years, so maybe it just never gained enough usage to be useful. It might not make the transition to the Leago environment, but maybe they’ll come up with something better for organizers to find TDs willing to come work their events. I looked over the list of TDs in Nebraska and recognized less than half of the names, but I stopped organizing, directing or playing in events some years ago, so I’m probably out of touch with the local scene. Perhaps an active player/TD/organizer is going to know the nearby TDs fairly well, I probably did 15 years ago.
It looks like in 2020, when we switched membership systems to CIVI-CRM, there were 28 TDs in LA and 7 were flagged as confidential (Do not trade), now there are 35 TDs and 19 are flagged as confidential.
A TD changing state should make an address change the same as any other member that moves, by either updating the information in their online profile or by contacting the office. If that TD has placed something in the public contact field that is now out-of-date, they’ll have to contact the office to have it updated.