With the FIA Retention Reports (2002–2008) still held in great regard, last year Dr Melvyn Hillsdon and I attempted to produce a new report. It was pulled due to a lack of robust data: of the 3.1 million member records that operators wanted us to analyse, we could access only 1.8 million. Many operators were simply unable to extract the data from their software systems or produce viable samples from their sites.

Even among these records, significant data cleaning was required, filtering out inputting errors and certain membership categories. Pay-as-you-go is hard to analyse, for example. We also remove complimentary memberships – which offer no useful insight into behaviour – and frozen memberships. To give a sense of the scale of the problem, one multi-site operator provided 200,000 member records; after eight weeks of cleaning, this was reduced to 60,000 usable records. Others provided data sets of live members only, from which it’s not possible to identify retention/attrition behaviours.

All this raises points to be addressed:
- No operator submitted data that was clean enough to conduct analysis without human intervention to prepare it, rendering automatic reporting redundant.
- Accurate data entry by staff is not considered a high enough priority, leading to errors.
- Software systems provide no range checks, providing opportunities for further inputting error.
- Reports produced by software systems cannot be considered error-free based on the quality of data they are working from.
- Due diligence is not possible if we’re unable to compare the performance of sites for length of membership and churn rates using recognised statistical methods.
- For operators looking to sell their clubs, maximising the revenue from these sales cannot be achieved if membership length data is missing. This is also true for those looking to purchase sites.
- Asking the NHS/health agencies to take seriously the industry’s attempts to improve the nation’s physical activity is a non-starter if we cannot accurately collect even the most basic of information.

Dr Paul Bedford - Consultant & retention expert