I am posting this as an informational item only. If you guys want to start another tech suit flame war over this, have at it, but I won't be participating.
Yesterday, I received an email which stated:
United States Masters Swimming is considering whether to allow Tech Suits (ie Blue 70, Speedo Fastskins, etc ) at short course yards meets.
Pacific Masters is polling swimmers who registered for the 2010 Pacific Masters Short Course Championships to find out what our swimmer's opinion is of this proposed rule change. The polling will close at noon, Tuesday September 7th.
This poll should take less than five minutes to complete. We do value your opinion, we hope to find out more about what our members think.
Unfortunately, having responded to the poll questions I can no longer access the poll, or I would post the questions too.
I'm sure they're just trying to understand the views of their most competitive swimmers, and that's a worthwile subset of the overall demographic to understand since that is the market for these suits.
There is no need to do that. They can poll a larger group and then have a question like "have you competed in a national or regional championship in the last two years?" to see what this "most competitive" subset thinks. It is always better to have the data and not need it, rather than the other way around.
The only (intellectually honest) reasons to ignore the larger membership that I can think of are: (i) the cost of polling or (ii) fear of annoying people with another email or survey when they don't care about the issue.
I think it is arguable that the majority of the most competitive people will compete regardless of what suits are allowed. Perhaps the people most worth listening to are the ones on the margins.
I'm sure they're just trying to understand the views of their most competitive swimmers, and that's a worthwile subset of the overall demographic to understand since that is the market for these suits.
There is no need to do that. They can poll a larger group and then have a question like "have you competed in a national or regional championship in the last two years?" to see what this "most competitive" subset thinks. It is always better to have the data and not need it, rather than the other way around.
The only (intellectually honest) reasons to ignore the larger membership that I can think of are: (i) the cost of polling or (ii) fear of annoying people with another email or survey when they don't care about the issue.
I think it is arguable that the majority of the most competitive people will compete regardless of what suits are allowed. Perhaps the people most worth listening to are the ones on the margins.
