This Washington Post survey of retired National Football League players was conducted online by Capital Insight, March 19 to April 3, 2013. A total of 512 former players completed the survey, selected from 3,092 valid email addresses from a publicly available listing of former players maintained by the NFL Players Association (NFLPA), the players union. While this is not a representative survey of all former NFL players, the resulting sample is similar across available demographic measures to a recent random survey of former NFL players conducted by the University of Michigan. Analysis does show that former players listed by the NFLPA appear to be more apt than those who are not listed to be on a list of known participants in lawsuits against the NFL.
Capital Insight is the independent polling group of Washington Post Media.