[CW] Re: CW digest, Vol 4 #370 - 7 msgs

[N2EY@aol.com]

In a message dated 1/30/2004 10:32:36 AM Eastern Standard Time, Charles.B.Wilber@Dartmouth.EDU writes:
 
> I think they key word here is "sample." A quick read of the sentence suggests
> that all U.S. amateurs were polled when actually just a "sample of all U.S.
> amateurs" were polled. 

That's exactly what it means - a certain small percentage of US hams were
surveyed. Not just ARRL members - all US amateurs. Probably got them
out of the FCC database.

What I find most interesting is that this is the first I'm hearing about
such a survey.

> I am unclear what "reachable population" means,
> though. 

It means those who were able to be contacted. One rather embarrassing 
problem of the ARS is that the database is often incorrect because
hams haven't sent in address and name changes, etc. IIRC, when the
ARRL did a survey back in 1996, something like 20% (!) of the surveys
came back "no such person at this address" or the equivalent. Which
could mean anything from "he's dead" to "he moved last week and hasn't
gotten around to letting FCC or the post office know". 

Use of US mail rather than email prevents biasing the results towards
those online.

> The wording of the statement is so ambiguous as to make the statement
> itself useless for anything at all.
> 
Not really! 

As I read it, they sent out a bunch of mail surveys to a sample
of the US hams and got back 1530 responses that were filled out
according to instructions. 53% response is extremely high, btw.

The key question is: How did they choose the sample? Was it 
simply hams picked at random from the database? Or was there
some selection criteria used, such as trying to insure that the
sample matched the general population of hams in license class,
geographic location, etc.?

73 de Jim, N2EY


> 73
> Charlie
> N1AOK
> 
> --- You wrote:
> > I just read this and i do not recall being polled by the arrl .
> > does anyone else ?
> > 73 Tony
> >
> > 27. Mr. Sumner presented the results of a market study conducted for the
> > ARRL in September 2003 by Readex, Inc. A mail survey of a sample of all 
> > US radio amateurs yielded 1,530 usable responses, a 53% 
> response rate
> > from the reachable population.
> --- end of quote ---
> _______________________________________________