Is ScubaBoard representative of the diving population at large?

[RJP]

I was at DEMA two weeks ago, and saw several pieces of market research from several organizations providing a "profile of the diving population."

We often discuss here on SB the idea that "ScubaBoard isn't really representative of the population of divers at large." Question was actually raised again just today on another thread.

Got me wondering how representative the ScubaBoard membership actually is compared to the overall population of divers. Maybe we are... who knows!

On the attached link I've captured six questions from one of the studies I saw at DEMA that should give a quick peek at whether there's a directional/high-level match from a demographic and psychographic standpoint.

If you've got a few moments to take the survey, that'd be great.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/NSQK69K

Based on how that goes... might be interesting to replicate the larger survey here.

 

[TMHeimer]

It may be difficult to determine if SB members are representative of divers in general. A poll could easily determine the %s of different age groups among SB members, but what other ways would you use to determine that SB members are representative? People vary so much in what they do or like, such as one person may be very adventurous but not care about serenity and nature, etc. If we are basing it on age only I would say no. I get the feeling that more SB members are older than the average diver. Generalization of course. The majority of OW students I see seem younger to me that the majority I read on SB.

 

[bowlofpetunias]

Done.

In my experience all communities have a broad range of members. That is no less so with the SB community. IMHO the highly active members of SB IMHO are more driven to learn and develop as divers similar to the more active divers generally. The less active ones are more reflective of the general dive population who are happy to just go dive once in a while.

It would be interesting if it was possible to determine if this spread really is consistent across the dive population in general. I would find it interesting to determine if there was a relationship to the amount of diving a person tends to do withe the likelihood of them being SB members.

---------- Post added December 8th, 2014 at 01:24 PM ----------

It may be difficult to determine if SB members are representative of divers in general. A poll could easily determine the %s of different age groups among SB members, but what other ways would you use to determine that SB members are representative? People vary so much in what they do or like, such as one person may be very adventurous but not care about serenity and nature, etc. If we are basing it on age only I would say no. I get the feeling that more SB members are older than the average diver. Generalization of course. The majority of OW students I see seem younger to me that the majority I read on SB.

Interesting concept. It seems to me that we get two major catgories of divers by age. Young people with disposable income to spare for adventure sports. As they age and take on responsibilities, debts and families they drift away. Oder people who have discharged most of the responsibilities and once again have more disposable income to participate in activities they have "always wanted to do". There are of course exceptions but this seems to be pretty consistent at the sites where I have dived over the years.

 

[RJP]

It may be difficult to determine if SB members are representative of divers in general. A poll could easily determine the %s of different age groups among SB members, but what other ways would you use to determine that SB members are representative? People vary so much in what they do or like, such as one person may be very adventurous but not care about serenity and nature, etc.

The law of large numbers... with a large enough sample any "extreme" differences within the SB population will get averaged out and we'll get a rough idea of the overall portrait.

I think we'll find that we're different... but will be interesting to see HOW different.

For the link above I just grabbed a handful of standard measures that happen to be in the one major study I saw at DEMA. Depending on how close/different SB is we can determine if it makes sense to try to replicate the overall study here. That would be a significant undertaking, so figured I'd do a test. If a larger test is conducted, the test results will also provide the ability to set up recruit quotas for various demographic groups.

The real interesting thing to find out here is whether an "overall ScubaBoard opinion" is actually different once we control for things like gender, age, income, etc.

That is to say - if we are "different" is it simply because our MAKEUP is different than the population overall... or do we actually think and behave differently.

 

[gvnwst]

The law of large numbers... with a large enough sample any "extreme" differences within the SB population will get averaged out and we'll get a rough idea of the overall portrait.

The thing I'd be worried about, here, is the SB members who are less active (even those like me, who hide in the shadows all day ). I'd guess that the people on the "low" end of the spectrum are less likely to fill out the survey, meaning we'll see the skew we "expected".

 

[lowviz]

... Got me wondering how representative the ScubaBoard membership actually is compared to the overall population of divers. Maybe we are... who knows! ...

I say completely representative. We are just people. It's not like any of us were ever on the Rachael Ray show or anything...

 

[Chugwhump]

I did the survey.
It was about 75 seconds to complete I guess.
I do not think that SB is representative of the diving population at large.
but then,
I am not sure I know what "The dive population" is either.
Here in SoFla, there a LOT of certified divers, who got certified, dove one summer, and never went back.
they liked it, but they are over it.
I do think that "The Pub" area of SB is VERY representative of the American population though.
Lots of angry, frustrated, know it all trolls, that do not dive very often in there.
But that's just me perhaps.

Chug
Not a troll.
Move along now, nothing more to see here.

 

[uncfnp]

Done. I'm in the not representative camp.

 

[RJP]

I say completely representative. We are just people. It's not like any of us were ever on the Rachael Ray show or anything...

I took the survey while wearing my $1,700 John Varvatos boots.

 

[JohnN]

I was at DEMA two weeks ago, and saw several pieces of market research from several organizations providing a "profile of the diving population."

We often discuss here on SB the idea that "ScubaBoard isn't really representative of the population of divers at large." Question was actually raised again just today on another thread.

Got me wondering how representative the ScubaBoard membership actually is compared to the overall population of divers. Maybe we are... who knows!

On the attached link I've captured six questions from one of the studies I saw at DEMA that should give a quick peek at whether there's a directional/high-level match from a demographic and psychographic standpoint.

If you've got a few moments to take the survey, that'd be great.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/NSQK69K

Based on how that goes... might be interesting to replicate the larger survey here.

As you know better than I, one of the "tricks" in market research is to gather a representative sample.

So what was the sampling methodology these other survey's used? Comparing anything to a self-selected population (the survey you posted) is certainly problematic.