Bill Horne, W1AC wrote:

I'd guess that a "valid" survey would have provisions to account for all
those surveyed, including a method to weed out silent keys, and
provision for guarding against "false positives", i.e., knee-jerk "Yes,
I'm active" responses.



What little I remember from college statistics tells me that the design
of the questions is all-important. The survey mustn't cue the respondent
as to "right" or "wrong" answers, and must provide "discriminator"
questions to confirm and/or deny the accuracy of previous answers.

It's a job for an expert: if we called someone up and asked "Are you
active?", the results would be skewed, as you point out. However, if the
question is, e.g. "Will you help with disaster preparedness as a ham?",
you risk getting a "novelty" response, i.e., a respondent who says "Yes"
just because he/she hasn't done it before.

Questions about purchasing are less likely to show bias, but there's
always the problem of "what do the answers mean?": if a ham says he's
going to buy a new rig this year, is he just trying to please the
questioner, is he window shopping, or is he just wishing out loud?

This is all theoretical, of course. The first issue is to define what
"active" means, and then we'd need a survey that accurately measures the
ham population for that metric. Short of putting remote RF sensors at a
statistically-valid percentage of ham operator's homes, I'm out of ideas.


For an accurate survey, instead of defining active, we would need to
have several questions related to activity. We'd want to first ask the
respondent if they considered themselves active, then questions would
follow asking about how many times per month they are involved in any of
several Amateur related activities.

Just a definition is almost impossible to arrive at. Even if a group
came to a consensus, the next person might not accept that at all.

Just here we see where I was looking at activity relating to things on
a weekly basis, another poster on more of a monthly/yearly basis, and
yet another looked at active as one who takes the trouble to renew their
license. All of those opinions are valid, even though that spans an
extreme range from someone like me who spends several hours each day
involved in one activity or another related to the ARS, to someone who
never gets on the air, but renews their license.

In the end, the survey folks tend to express results in terms of
percentages, such as "20 percent of those who responded use their radios
on a daily basis." 30 percent of respondents participate at least once a
year in a public service event.

The nasty little line in all that is "those who responded". And just
like college football rankings, no matter how sophisticated the computer
program, somewhere, someone is going to make the first decisions which
will be based pretty much on opinion. GIGO, so to speak.

It truly isn't simple, eh?

- 73 de Mike KB3EIA -

Steve Bonine writes:

There are not many numeric measures of activity, but one that comes to
mind is the number of people who vote in the election for ARRL Section
Manager. In the following, the number of votes is taken from the ARRL
web site and the number of hams from
http://www.speroni.com/FCC/ARRL/State1A.html

Kentucky, Feb. 2007, 527 votes, 8534 hams, 6% voted.
Texas, Feb. 2007, 1577 votes, 42,949 hams, 4% voted.
New Hampshire, May 2007, 513 votes, 4825 hams, 11% voted.

You can speculate about how much correlation there is between "active
ham" and "voted in ARRL election for SM". I am certainly NOT
suggesting that this is an accurate measure of the activity level of
the ham radio community, but it's an interesting number.

Well, I'm a ARRL member (the majority of US hams are not, and thus
cannot vote for SM), and I get on the air a couple of times a week.
If there were a contested election for SM of my section, I would
probably have no real information on the relative merits of the
candidates, and thus would leave voting to those who do know something
about it.

I consider it my obligation to the polity to inform myself and vote in
all elections for public office in my jurisdiction, but I don't regard
voting in ARRL elections in the same light. "An active ham who is a
member of the League" and "a ham who is an active member of the
League" are far different things.

73 DE KW6H

--
Chris Jewell Gualala CA USA 95445

Maybe this will help:

When talking about Fishing, the US Government defines an Active Fishing
Hobbyist as someone that goes fishing 52 or more times a year!

73 es Gud DX!

Young



"Michael Coslo" wrote in message
...
Another thread got me thinking about the number of active Hams.


Just what percentage of Amateurs are active ones, defining active as
either being on the air regularly, or participating in Amateur related
activities on a regular basis? (like say on a weekly basis?)


Thoughts?


- 73 de Mike KB3EIA -

"YOUNG SNODGRASS" wrote in
message news:3lspi.4439$Gs4.1717@trndny05
Maybe this will help:

When talking about Fishing, the US Government defines an
Active Fishing Hobbyist as someone that goes fishing 52
or more times a year!
73 es Gud DX!

Young

What if they only go 51 times..? ;-)

73 Ivor G6URP

"Ivor Jones" wrote in message
...


What if they only go 51 times..? ;-)


Then they're obviously not properly motivated and not "contributing to the
hobby", and clearly not active in fishing.

The Man in the Maze
QRL on Baboquivari Peak, AZ

--
Iitoi