Date: Thu, 9 Apr 1998 23:28:54 -0500 (EST) From: John Fieber <jfieber@indiana.edu> To: Dan Janowski <danj@3skel.com> Cc: hackers@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Fw: Your Article "Freeware: The Heart & Soul of the Internet" Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.3.96.980409231615.11501C-100000@fallout.campusview.indiana.edu> In-Reply-To: <352D95AA.6F549027@3skel.com>
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On Thu, 9 Apr 1998, Dan Janowski wrote: > We should conduct a census! Put it on the website, in the FTP banners on > wcarchive, in the CDROMs. Well, ya, but the results would rate next to worthless in terms of statistical validity. Good demographic studies are pretty hard to do when you don't know the extent of your population, and asking people to register isn't going to define it for you. I did one random sampling of mailing list subscribers (I defined my population as mailing list subscribers) and sent a small survey regarding the FreeBSD web site. The response rate was in the negihborhood of two to three percent. Completely useless. 60 to 70 percent is usually considered the bottom end of acceptable in survey research. I got much more data from a form on the website, but the validity of that data is highly questionable for lots of reasons outlined in any survey research methods textbook. BUT, a good demographic study of FreeBSD users would be extremely valuable to have...so all you statistics junkies, start thinking of a way to come up with a *representative* sample the user population. -john To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-hackers" in the body of the message
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