Hello All,

Thanks so much for your contribution to the survey! Here's a link for the survey result
http://www.surveymonkey.com/Report.asp?U=151937534215

A special thanks to the two moderators, Richard and Gleff. THANKS SO MUCH for letting me to post the survey link here!

You are always welcome to drop me a line if you have some questions or comments!

Christine (Milegirl)

Just a friendly reminder for those of you who are still interested in the survey results, the survey results link will be closed at 11:00pm (seattle time), Nov27. Thank you.

Milegirl

You've done a neat survey, but there's one thing to think about.

Did you conduct a random survey or were the participants self selected (and therefore) not a non bias sample? It's kinda like asking everyone at this year's Michigan Ohio state game which is their favorite football team --

The results would probably be something like 5,000 OSU, 90,000 U of M and 10,000 other and 2,000 undecided.

If the later, you have to worry about the validity of your results in 'the real world'.

Bob H

interesting results. good luck!

Thank you for taking the time to post the link!

It's interesting to see the demographics of the respondants. For example, 80% were men and 20% were women. 80% are under the age of 44.

Very interesting results. I expected most of the results while a few things surprised me.

Some of these results seem of limited validity. You've got 132 of 134 respondents saying they "usually" use the Internet to research travel plans. Well, it's a web-based survey, so your respondent base is limited to people who are comfortable with website interfaces. Of course they all use the web to research travel. The actual percentage is far lower, and if you went and stood in front of a Safeway with a clipboard asking that question, you'd get a lower -- and more valid -- answer. I'd throw that question out.

Same with the one asking "Do you currently belong to any frequent flyer programs?" As you solicited respondents from the web's leading virtual community of frequent flyer program members, you naturally get a statistically invalid answer (99% say yes).

65% of your respondent base claims to travel more than 10 times annually; that's another way-off-the-norm response.

Because the respondent base is self-selected, unusually well-traveled compared to the general population, and excludes people who are not web savvy, I don't know what the survey really proves.

I believe this was a survey about Flyertalk(ers) for some kind of term paper/thesis. There will almost certainly be limited generalizability to the average traveller, but that doesn't matter. Of course, we don't know if milegirl was lucky enough to get a reasonable sample of Flyertalkers (and the results for gender, age, and hh income say: probably not), but that's great for her, as it adds pages to the discussion and limitations sections of the thesis.

Milegirl, Thanks for posting the results of the survey. Will we get to read the end product?

Of course it's not representative of the traveling public, but it was never supposed to be. Whether or not it's representative of FT, or of people who frequent Internet travel discussion groups, is a legitimate question - which I don't know of any practical way to answer.

It's kinda like surveying registered Republicans about what they think of Pres. Bush. The results are almost certainly not representative of U.S. voters overall, but can be interesting in their own right.

This is.

I didn't mean to sound negative or give offense. But I think Efrem is exactly right -- this is like one of those political party surveys. They have slanted questions designed to produce a certain response, as in:

"Do you favor reductions to bloated federal budgets and out-of-control Congressional spending? A) Yes B) No C) Undecided"

Those surveys are thin covers for donation pitches; the actual "data" they generate is pretty useless. What is the value of this survey? I don't even think it got Flyertalker demographics right (80% men?)... which perhaps reflects that men are more likely than women to self-select themselves to answer surveys.

Perhaps I didn't make myself sufficiently clear. I don't think the questions on this survey were slanted. For the most part they were objective: how do you "slant" a question that asks, for example, if you've attended any FT in-person get-togethers? Either you have or you haven't. It's not a matter of opinion, unless you're stuck trying to figure out whether or not a planned meeting with two others in a bar at Heathrow counts. My use of a survey of Republicans about Bush wasn't to suggest slanted questions, only to suggest a sample which is not representative of the overall population. Whether or not some political surveys phrase questions so as to elicit a desired response is a separate topic that I didn't bring up and that I don't think is on-topic here.

I simply think that the survey sample has to be recognized for what it is, self-selected among participants in an Internet travel discussion group. The results can be of value in that context.