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 -

Steve Bonine wrote:
Bill W1AC wrote:

I think the only way to settle this question is to conduct a
well-designed survey with a ramdom sample of hams.

This one is tricky. With most surveys, there's no correlation between
the response rate and what you're trying to measure. If you're asking
for someone's opinion on an issue, you do a survey and get 10% response,
you can assume that the results are valid even though 90% of the people
who received the survey didn't bother to respond.

In a survey that asks licensed hams if they're active, if you get 10%
response, do you assume that the other 90% are inactive hams? No, you
can't do that. But you have to assume that an active ham is more likely
to respond to a survey about ham radio than an inactive one. Thus the
response is likely to be significantly skewed towards activity.

If there are any statisticians among the readers, please tell us how
many hams we'd have to sample to get a valid measurement.

For opinion surveys, the more you survey, the higher the accuracy. In
this case, I'm not sure that adding more people to the survey improves
the accuracy since active hams are more likely to respond. The key is
how to interpret the non-responders, something that seems unknowable.

I don't claim to be a statistician, so I would appreciate comments from
someone who is.

73, Steve KB9X


Steve,

Those are good points.

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.

HTH.

Bill

--
73,

Bill W1AC

(Remove "73" and change top level domain for direct replies)

"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

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" wrote in message
...


The idea of the exercise was to determine what percentage of the folks listed
by the FCC as licensed amateur radio operators that has actually contributed
to the hobby in the recent past, or might do so in the near future.

"....contributed to the hobby"?

I hear a lot of "active" hams (regularly on the air) whose "contribution" is
"59 Old Man, QTH here is Resume Speed, Arizona, and the name is Broken Old
Bottle. Sebentee Tree. XYL is calling me for lunch". Good for them. They're
enoying themselves.

I don't think "being active" has any direct correlation to "contributed to the
hobby in the recent past".

Most of us are involved in the hobby for our personal enjoyment, no more, no
less. Some small percentage may consider that they are "contributing".....
good for them, but such noble purpose isn't a requirement to be considered
"active".

The Man in the Maze
QRM from Baboquivari Peak, AZ

--
Iitoi

"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

Iitoi wrote:
"Steve Bonine" wrote in message
...

The idea of the exercise was to determine what percentage of the folks listed
by the FCC as licensed amateur radio operators that has actually contributed
to the hobby in the recent past, or might do so in the near future.

"....contributed to the hobby"?

I hear a lot of "active" hams (regularly on the air) whose "contribution" is
"59 Old Man, QTH here is Resume Speed, Arizona, and the name is Broken Old
Bottle. Sebentee Tree. XYL is calling me for lunch". Good for them. They're
enoying themselves.

Like "active", "contributed to the hobby" requires a definition (which I
didn't provide).

I don't think "being active" has any direct correlation to "contributed to the
hobby in the recent past".

An iteresting idea. I was equating "active" with "contributed to the
hobby". This is, perhaps, naive.

Back when I was a kid, I listened to hams on the air, and was motivated
to get my license. I wonder if people today, listening to much of what
I hear on the ham bands, would be motivated to get involved in the
hobby. Are these guys "contributing to the hobby"? I do wonder.

Most of us are involved in the hobby for our personal enjoyment, no more, no
less. Some small percentage may consider that they are "contributing".....
good for them, but such noble purpose isn't a requirement to be considered
"active".

You are, reasonably, interpreting my words in a different way than I
meant them. I was equating "generating RF on the ARS frequencies" with
"contributing to the hobby". I was actually trying to be more liberal
and include the folks whose interests involved designing or building
equipment (whether they used it or not on the air) or other positive
contributions like teaching classes, being active in their local club,
and so on.

Now that you mention it, I realize that "contributed to the hobby" and
"active" can be quite different. The malicious jammer, or the frequency
policeman on 75 meters, are "active". They may not be contributing to
the hobby.

Food for thought.

73, Steve KB9X

On Sun, 29 Jul 2007 03:05:33 EDT, Steve Bonine wrote:

I hear a lot of "active" hams (regularly on the air) whose "contribution" is
"59 Old Man, QTH here is Resume Speed, Arizona, and the name is Broken Old
Bottle. Sebentee Tree. XYL is calling me for lunch". Good for them. They're
enoying themselves.

The derisive comment above sounds like that of my very sarcastic
brother who, in spite of holding an extra class license for many
years, hasn't been on the air for the same very many years because he
doesn't want to talk to hams who sound like that, thereby assuming
that all hams do.

Like "active", "contributed to the hobby" requires a definition (which I
didn't provide).

Hams who sound like the above "contribute to the hobby" by:

(a) occupying spectrum space which otherwise would show up as
"unoccupied" , i.e. available for grabbing by some "untouched-by-
human-brain" electronic occupancy detector, and

(b) providing an example of what not to sound like on the air so that
newcomers will know what to avoid doing.
--

73 de K2ASP - Phil Kane

From a Clearing in the Silicon Forest
Beaverton (Washington County) Oregon

e-mail: k2asp [at] arrl [dot] net

On Jul 29, 6:14 pm, Phil Kane wrote:

I hear a lot of "active" hams (regularly on the air) whose "contribution" is
"59 Old Man, QTH here is Resume Speed, Arizona, and the name is Broken Old
Bottle. Sebentee Tree. XYL is calling me for lunch". Good for them. They're
enoying themselves.

The derisive comment above sounds like that of my very sarcastic
brother who, in spite of holding an extra class license for many
years, hasn't been on the air for the same very many years because he
doesn't want to talk to hams who sound like that, thereby assuming
that all hams do.

It wasn't intended to be derisive, just an example to support my
premise that even the most mundane QSO is, after all, "activity", and
meets KB9X's definition of "contributing".

The Man in the Maze
QRV from Baboquivari Peak, AZ

--
Iitoi