Do you want the tech suit back for SCY?

Chris, Any poll needs to start or end with who is answering the questions i.e. fitness swimmer, triathlete, occasional competitor, compulsive competitor etc. I am not sure of the statistics on this, but for any poll to be statistically valid/significant, it would need to have what, 60% of the given population? If that is true, than any poll we do here is not likely to rise to that threshold if we are talking either about the entire USMS population or any subgroup of the population. What percentage of those in USMS follow the forum? Surely there is someone on the forum who knows enough about statistics to give us some insight on this. What would be the number needed for a representative sample? Would there need to be a representative sample for each of the subgroups mentioned above?

Thanks Julie. I think I was thinking of the percentage you need when e.g. on a dissertation you send out a questionaire, you need a certain percentage of responses before the responses can be determined valid. Or at least that is how I remember it........could be wrong. In any event, if this is to be done correctly, it needs to be more than throwing a question out and seeing what happens.

I'm curious about how general membership that frequents the forums feels about this. There was this poll recently: Tech Suit Poll(yet again) - U.S. Masters Swimming Discussion Forums

Chris, Any poll needs to start or end with who is answering the questions i.e. fitness swimmer, triathlete, occasional competitor, compulsive competitor etc. I am not sure of the statistics on this, but for any poll to be statistically valid/significant, it would need to have what, 60% of the given population? If that is true, than any poll we do here is not likely to rise to that threshold if we are talking either about the entire USMS population or any subgroup of the population. What percentage of those in USMS follow the forum? Surely there is someone on the forum who knows enough about statistics to give us some insight on this. What would be the number needed for a representative sample? Would there need to be a representative sample for each of the subgroups mentioned above? As Julie says, a sample can be representative without being large. How representative it is depends much more on how the sample is chosen, rather than the size. The forum as a sample is biased not because there are relatively few of us, but because among other things we tend to be a little more passionate (okay, weird) about swimming than a typical USMS member. But a relatively large sample would still not be representative if it was chosen poorly. A large representative sample is better -- but more expensive -- than a small representative sample only in that it improves precision, decreasing those "margins of error" you always hear about in polls. As far as the necessity of a poll asking for the data you mention, that depends entirely on the purpose of the poll. "Throwing out a question" is fine if you want to get a sense for how the majority feels about that question, regardless of how "competitive" that majority is. The only reason I can see to ask for the information you want is to see how it breaks out by proficiency and desire to compete. Why do you want to know that? I am a little wary of asking for that information if it will (for example) cause non-competitors to avoid taking the poll for fear their voice will not "count." (Which would cause the sampling bias you seek to avoid.) Possibly I could include such questions at the end of the poll and mark it as optional. Electronic-only polls might introduce a sampling bias too.

I came back to swimming after 18 years because of the tech suits. My 2¢

I can't be sure(we'd need to conduct a poll),but I suspect that the forum is weighted towards"serious competitors" so that our input should carry some weight with the powers that be.Surprisingly to me ,our polls seem to slant anti-tech suit.

I can't be sure(we'd need to conduct a poll), :afraid:

I can't be sure(we'd need to conduct a poll),but I suspect that the forum is weighted towards"serious competitors" so that our input should carry some weight with the powers that be.Surprisingly to me ,our polls seem to slant anti-tech suit. Hey Allen! Off the subject (because I've said ENOUGH about tech suits in past threads; especially the one I started... :blah: ), I thought of you while doing my breaststroke sculling drills in the cruise ship's tiny pool! :D I hope you are doing well! I'm back in the "big" (88 degrees :eek: !!!) pool training for a LCM developmental meet in Atlanta. Your love for LCM has inspired me... :D

I am not sure of the statistics on this, but for any poll to be statistically valid/significant, it would need to have what, 60% of the given population? If that was the case, there would be no firms doing any political polling whatsoever. And our elections, which rarely get even half the voters to participate, would also be meaningless. If the poll respondents are selected randomly, you don't need all that many to get a confidence interval of only a couple of percent. What the USMS discussion forum polls lack is that random selection process, and there is no way to get that in this venue.

I came back to swimming after 18 years because of the tech suits. My 2¢ I joined competitive swimming because of the tech suits. I left because of the ban.