Originally Posted by
Flamer
Interesting. I did take the DPA survey, and it took it prior to looking at the results. I pretty much fell in the middle of the bell curve on everything. Not a whole lot of statistical outliers in the survey results. It seems to me that folks are putting down reasonable expectations in the survey, and not "swinging for the fence".
It would be cool if a statistically significant number of people (6000?) took the survey so that we could measure how close we get to the actual desires of the pilot group.
Even if you hate DPA, you should take the survey. It takes 5 mins and the questions are actually less leading overall than the ones from alpa. If enough people took the open survey, it may even put a little leverage back in the pilots hands, and if nothing else, provide you a knowledge of the general desires of your fellow pilots.
Do it.
The DPA survey couldn't possibly be statistically significant because of sample bias. Delta pilots who visit the FPA website are not a random selection of Delta pilots. I have no clue how the results would skew but it's undeniable the results would not be statistically significant.
The ALPA survey suffers from the same sample bias but it isn't really trying to be statistically significant, it to s trying to be democratic. In other words, your vote only counts if you participate. If DPA, DALPA or anyone else really wanted to have statistically significant view of Delta pilots at a particular point in time (views change with time) they would have to select pilots at random.
My statistics education ended a long time ago so I'm not sure what a significant sample size for a population of 12,000 would be. It would be much smaller then the turnout of either survey but would yield better results