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Guest dswo

The FSX Survey is flawed

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>>Had I been given the choice of "Satisfactory" or>"Acceptable">>I would have opted for that middle ground. >>>>Suerly there is a grey, undefined area between good and>>poor............>>Grey, undefined areas, and middle ground don't help anyone get>a good overview of anything.>>Sometimes very black and white answers work better, as they>force you to take a firm stance in your response.>I have to disagree. Not everything is YES or NO. Example, Question 8:---------------------------* 8. When you have had issues with FSX, have you been able to get solutions? YesNo----------------------------If I answer YES or NO, there is an implication that I HAD issues. How do you answer the question if you did NOT have issues. To follow with question 9 regarding where I recieved help, once again this would imply that I had issues in the first place.In conclusion, most surveys remind me of the following:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies,_damned_..._and_statisticsAs Richard Dawson would say: "Survey says"... always made me wonder who the heck they polled :)


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Guest wyoming

It is a "survey", not a statistical test. It has no predictive or inferential value whatsoever and, as a survey, doesn't purport any such. It does have a descriptive value, however. And this value provides more information about the current perception of FSX by the Avsim readers than a series of inflammatory or cranky posts.

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Professionally run polls take care to eliminate bias as far as possible. To do this they have to make some selection in their sampling. As an obvious example, the general population is about 50% men and 50% women. A poll in which 90% of the replies came from men would clearly be unrepresentative, so those conducting the poll ensure this doesn't happen. This applies to other differences, race, social class, age etc. Those conducting the survey on the ground will be given quotas of the different types of people to interview to avoid this bias.Self-selection introduces bias. It's just a fact of life that those who are very disappointed with anything (such as FSX) are, naturally, more likely to take the opportunity to express their feelings than those who are satisfied, or those who think it's "OK sort of".

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Guest dswo

>Self-selection introduces bias. It's just a fact of life that>those who are very disappointed with anything (such as FSX)>are, naturally, more likely to take the opportunity to express>their feelings than those who are satisfied, or those who>think it's "OK sort of".This is reasonable. But when I look at the actual results, I notice a couple of things:1. About two thirds of respondents WOULD recommend FSX to a friend.2. This was the ratio a few days ago, when there were only 1,000 respondents, and it's still the ratio now that there are 3,000+ respondents.My inferences:a. It's not just, or even primarily, FSX-haters who are taking the survey.b. The initial sample (first 1,000) was predictive of AVSIM users who hadn't taken the survey yet (the next 2,000).

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What you say is of course true but it doesn't show that there's no bias. Suppose, to illustrate my point, that 10% are disatisfied and they all respond, but that only half of those are satisfied respond. Assuming (again to illustate my point) the total number of those who could respond to the survey is 5000 then there would be be 500 disatisfied responses, and 2250 satisfied responses ((5000 - 500) * 0.5). That gives an apparent ratio of 18% (500 / (2250 + 500)) who are disatisfied whereas the underlying figure is, by definition, only 10% (500 / 5000). In the case of the FSX survey, this suggests that there are more satisfied users that the survey apparently shows.

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>I believe that the results of the survey will not correctly>mirror the feelings of those of us that have completed it.>>I find it impossible to correctly indicate the answers to the>questions about both "...the experience " and the "...frame>rates" when faced with the stark choice of either "Good" or>"Poor".>>Had I been given the choice of "Satisfactory" or "Acceptable">I would have opted for that middle ground. >>Suerly there is a grey, undefined area between good and>poor............>>CliffNo, you had the choice of Excellant, very good, good, poor, very poor, and unusable. I would say anything in the poor and below would be considered unacceptable, unsatisfactry or unusable, and anything in the good to excellant range would be considered acceptable, satisfactory or excellant. Not sure where is the disconnect here, other than terminolgy.


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Tom

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