Contribute to research on the benefits of martial arts!

Martial Artists! Contribute your experiences to an international research project investigating links between martial arts training and development of communication and leadership skills.

There is so much anecdotal evidence around about the benefits of our training but here is a way we can all help develop more hard science on it.

Mortal Mouse follower Sonja H. Bickford (DBA, MBA) is a Taekwondo mum who, like so many probably reading this, discovered a love of martial arts later in life.

But here’s the kicker! (See what I did there? Haha!)

She’s also an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Nebraska Kearney, USA!

And now she’s combining her talents and passions in an exciting research project.

Sonja is gathering data via an online survey for Martial Artists, Instructors OR parents of Martial Artists

Participation in the survey is voluntary, anonymous and is open to anyone over the age of 19.

Sonja has limited her data catchment to specific countries so is seeking input from martial artists living in:

• Australia
• New Zealand
• USA
• UK
• Canada
• Estonia
• Finland
• Greenland
• Norway
• Iceland
• Sweden

Completion of the survey only takes about 10 minutes.

Take the survey

With so many supportive members of this #taekwondo tribe from other areas not mentioned above, I was hoping we could start a conversation in the comments below. This I’m certain would provide additional evidence for Sonja’s work.

Some of the questions posed in her survey (and which you might like to respond to below if you are outside the catchment of Sonja’s survey) are:

• Is there a difference in how you would describe yourself now, compared to before starting martial arts and if so, what are those differences?
• Does your dojang or school promote use of a different style of communication and/or behavior compared to that used in your everyday life?
• And if so, have you found yourself using that style of communication or behavior outside the dojang or school?

I first came across Sonja in this news article about her family’s Taekwondo journey.

The mention of her research had me quite intrigued so through the magic of Facebook, I was able to make contact with her and find out more.

I was so interested in her work, that I asked Sonja if she would consider expanding the catchment of her survey from USA to also include the experiences of Martial Artists in Australia and New Zealand.

Thankfully she agreed and so did her research supervisors.

So please, contribute to Sonja’s valuable work by clicking the below link and completing her online survey.

Let’s see how many Mortal Mouse followers we can send her way!

Take the survey

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