Survey on TSA impact
 

The link below is for a survey posted on crustylogic about the TSA situation. He's included a question for people to specify if they are from flyertalk and he said he'll break the results out for just flyertalk posters.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/RFCBFMJ

This was posted on Wed:


OK, some very quick survey results starting with the race to see what forum generates the most responses.

Tripadvisor: 490
Flyertalk: 28
Thirtythousandfeet: 2
Airlinecrew.net: 2
Crusty Logic: 5*
No Response: 187

* I assume that a major portion of the No Responses are actually Crusty Logic folk since I didn't add this question until 5 days after the survey went up - so I'll give myself a nominal second place :-)

Brief top responses:

91.2% US
2.2% Canada, OZ, Switzerland.
Plus respondents from 18 other countries

53% male
41% female
3% homosexual male

Average:
14 Domestic R/T
3 Int'l R/T
28 trips through TSA per year
22% have been through full-body
73% have opted out

55% of travel is business, 45% is leisure

Impact on future travel:
35% eliminating future air travel until TSA changes
12% reduce air travel by 80%
10% reduce by 60%
23% reduce by 40%

68% of those who've been through new TSA procedures multiple times say that it gets more difficult emotionally with each time, 31% say it stays the same.

A very quick calc of the stats indicates that 73% of respondents fly at least 4 round-trips per year thus at least nominal frequent flyers (I should have included a question on silver/gold/plat status - oh well).

Poorly worded survey. I despise the TSA as a waste of money and because they are security theater. I opt out to make a point, not because I'm "terrified".

With TSA, people confuse "polite" with professional. While many of the line workers are polite, not one of them is a professional.

Survey methodology / structure is a mess on several counts. Its resulted should be discounted no matter what they are.

1. Age groupings are "Less than 13," "13 to 17," "18 to 22," "23 to 29," then by decade, stretching off into the distance. Looks like the author is in his teens and regards anyone over 29 as more or less irrelevant.

2. Ridiculous / politically correct choice of ten different "genders." "Bisexual-female body" is not a "gender."

3. User forced into false choice set when asked how big a travel reduction he/she will undergo; None / 20% / 40% / 60% / 80% / No future travel.

4. Hyperbole: User is forced to rate reaction to new security policies on a scale from "No Concern" to "Very Bothered" to "Terrified." Inherent bias in the wording. That's what numerical scales are for.

5. Questions about how "terrified" you would be to have "your daughter" scanned nude or groped, but no questions about sons, no questions about outrage / anger.

We need better polling data on public attitudes towards scanning, security and TSA but efforts like this do more harm than good because they are so easy to pick apart.

I'd discriminate between the two. If my son is 16 years or older, I'd consider his psyche safe. If my daughter was ANY age, I'd fear the results of being mauled by complete strangers. Maybe that is flawed understanding of psychology, but it is how I'd look at it.