Arcady's means value is incorrect in sampling in this margin. arcady is correct that self selection is not the most desirable method -- however, there is no methodology present that allows any other method. Which is to say that the argument is valid. The view is too narrow, though. The data's valid.

incidentally -- arcady -- you got guts, goin' polisci and all :)

...I agree with Arcady. Your starting population, from which you're culling a sample, is limited to people who use the various forums and further to people who read your posts for the survey, and then again to people who chose to respond to it. Compare the actual total population of Poser users with the very specifically filtered population sample you're working with. I'm not talking at all about sample size, but rather sample quality. It certainly can't be said to be accurate to 7 or 8 percent as a representation of the entire Poser population, but only of that very filtered population. Some results could and probably do have a very large error with respect to the total Poser user base. Still a neat poll though. Probably tells us which way the wind is blowing, but not how fast ;)

Bookmark till tomorrow...

one other interesting observation of not having proportional representation of people who dont use the more popular Poser forums: the results obviously will be heavily slanted toward daz figures, as Im sure someone somewhere has pointed out by now. Who knows, for example, what the percentage of non forum users who only use Jessi might be? It could be 20, 40, 60 percent? I dont know, but it could be orders of magnitude higher than 1.9% and Id be willing to bet 1,024 pixels that it is. If I had Jessi and V3 next to each other the first time I ever fired up Poser V3 would never have seen any use on my comp. None of us knows, except possibly efrontierI guess they do hold a few cards ;) Some of those same people are buying, or will buy, Miki, TY, etc and dont even know what V3 is, because, remember, they dont read the forums. We just dont know if that percentage is insignificant or 50% or somewhere in between. The point is were missing a big chunk, maybe the biggest chunk, of the puzzle.

ebots. be gone.

I'm with nerd. After filling out the long survey and taking my time, to have it return an error twice I wasn't willing to waste my time doing it again from the beginning.

Tunesy raises a good question. I'd say that a poll self-selected by the 'most active' users is likely to be valid, since the 'most active' users are exactly the likely buyers of new stuff. So there's no reason to seek out everybody who happens to own Poser, just for the sake of an ideal random sampling. But are the forum participants the most active users? The purchasing set very likely includes lots of folks who never read forums but just check the stores and freestuffs.

..in related news, Dewey defeats Truman..;)

Some quick notes: This survey cost 114 dollars. I paid for that. It was advertised through google and msn using fairly common keywords, and the link was passed through legal and advertising circles as well. There were over 18,300 unique visits. There were over 700 responses. Duplicates were culled. There were 2100 attempts to complete the survey. Rosity and animotions featured the survey in their newsletters which have a higher percentage of non-forum readers and greater response -- 60% of the survey responses came after that exposure. There were no active forum posts during those times. The one area I was unable to get the survey to that I know poser is used in is educational circles -- and I wasn't trying for the pre-viz market in general. All effective polls require a base. Regardless of the specific type of survey, all polls currently conducted today are built up on top of and utilize existing data from previously collected sample data -- in some cases stretching back 18 years for marketing, and 3 to 6 for political depending on the nature of the poll. That initial base sample did not exist for this particuar group until now. That initial base sample is always pretty much conducted exactly like this one. That baseline is critical to the developmetn of a core dataset that is then grown and refined. Average sample refinement runs over 6 to 12 runs in order to reach an accuracy level of less than 3%. 3 to 5 runs to get below 5%. The people active in the forums across the ten most frequented sites comprise less than 1% of an estimated 300,000 installed and active community users. You can nit pick and quibble all ya want. I'm known for doing something similar, so I understand the impulse. However, you weren't aware of those points above. I'm going to conduct the next survey in either April or June (I'm still parital to June, but the new software I have for the surveys is really incredible and might speed the process up a great deal). THe survey will be easier to take, but somewhat longer. It won't error out, and there will be additional capabilities for portection of information (it uses a non-identificable cookie so you can return to and complete). Each time I do the survey, I'm going to continue my quest to expand on the dataset and increase the accuracy. That's the way the methodology works, and not only is it sound, but its know to produce more accurate measures. As I've said before -- you'll get the value you want out of it. There's good value there. A lot of it. If you are predisposed to think it valueless, well, ain't nothin I'm gonna say is gonna change your mind, and I've forgotten that a couple times. Its good data. Its public data. I've got four sponsors for the next edition's freebies. I'm looking to get 10 total. They would provide some sort of free item as the incentive and it would be exclusive to the poll. IF anyone is interested, you can contact me through IM or email here. Again -- thanks to everyone who took the survey. Enjoy the data. I'll be back again with more...

I understand that there are limits to what can and can't be done. I understand that opinions vary about the best methods to do things and what is or isn't accurate. Most importantly, I also understand that this is justa starting point. A beginning. A first try. It appears that some have forgotton that. BTW, I downloaded the old one so I have the IP numbers. Will someone please explain to me how I can use them to find out who to hunt down and kill for using V3? That may be the best way to increase the sales of my A3 products. Oh, wait a minute. I don't have any products for sale at all. Never mind. Whew. That was close. I'm glad I don't have to kill again. It gets so messy sometimes. ;-)

Will someone please explain to me how I can use them to find out who to hunt down and kill for using V3? Well if memory serves... If the person has a dynamic IP (ISP gives you a new IP every time you log on) then you will have to know when they took the survey (i.e. when they were logged on under that IP) then go find out which ISP has that IP block and ask them who was on at that time. This usually requires a search warrant. If they have static IP then you can skip the 'find out what time they took the survey' step but you still have to go to the ISP. The only way you might find out who it was or exactly where they are is if by some chance they are surfing under the static IP that they have registered for their website. Which is statistically improbable. Youd have better luck asking people to fess up to whom they voted for.

ok. Who did you vote for? [grin]

I voted for the hostile takeover of DAZ to dismantle the Victoria line and suppress aiko's coup d'etat attempt currently in progress. :)

Well, AFAIK in Europe the distribution of the raw data is very close to illegality, and might discourage european users from participating again. :-(

Why?
Poser forum users are few enough so you can find who is who in the poll results. I'm a long time lurker, and I know bits & pieces about many people in the forum(s), things they said about themselves, their likes/dislikes etc. (insert evil laughter)
Using those informations, I was able to identify many of them in the database, including IP addresses which (usually) allow to pinpoint the region the user lives in... And get a view in personal things I'm not sure they intended to share with me, like their income, sex and age.

IMHO it would be better to only publish compiled data. After all, most merchants aren't statisticians and don't know what to do with a bunch of CSVs.

...a couple years ago my checking account, of all things, got 'hacked' over a period of a couple months for over $2,000 before I noticed it. After some heated back and forth with my bank for a short time I got it back, but it was a hell of an eye opener. I'd always expected credit card accounts to be targets, but some crook managed to hit my checking directly. After that experience I certainly wouldnt want my ip address to become a potential target, especially if any income info was available. I respect the fact that you spent money out of pocket and a lot of time to do this, ynsaen, but having ip addresses attached was a helluva a blunder.

I'd always expected credit card accounts to be targets, but some crook managed to hit my checking directly. not really supprising to me. especially if you write checks or throw away bank statements or canceled checks. checking account numbers can be easier to get than credit card numbers and less protected too.

...yea. After looking at it closely the bank and I were both reasonably sure it was net related, but there's a small chance it could have been paper related.

The people active in the forums across the ten most frequented sites comprise less than 1% of an estimated 300,000 installed and active community users. That pretty much declares my point right there. From less than 1%, an online poll then uses self-select in to gather only those like us in this thread who are essentially a little curmudgeony or possessed of our own egos enough to want to bother. We select ourselves in for various reasons, those reasons can easily denote personality traits not typical of the average user. There is no method of online polling that can be said by anyone who deserves their credentials as a professional researcher to be able to gather a valid selection set. They are merely useful for annectdotes. For guaging the views of people with views like you, or for guaging the views of people who have the kind of views that are connected to people who can't stop mouthing off like I'm doing right now... :) Of people who feel a need to make you hear them. And frankly, we are not the people who need to be heard... And just because we want to be heard, that does not mean we are actually the ones driving the market / buying the product. It is simply too easy for it to be limited to only those that select in. Consider another common polling method - having your pollster stand outside a grocery store and ask people if they could fill out a form or answer some questions. It is rather easy to select out of this - you just say no and walk away. But the original sample is decently random, and you can still get a good cross selection. The end result here is that you are not choosing them, and they are not choosing you. Both situations when they happen void the validity of data. An online poll however, requires an active step from the user - they come to you by choice, you don't come to them by choice or by random. That is all it takes to destroy the validity of it. That is just one of many potential flaws. If you paid for it, I understand you have an investment in seeing it as good data, but I would not pay for it again... You bought 'a bill of goods' as they say. It may be 'a start' - but a building built on a bad foundation eventually falls down.

Attached Link: http://www.ncpp.org/internet.htm

Some further news and related articles: http://www.ncpp.org/qajsa.htm#10 http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/11820.html http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/ncpp_doc.html http://www.poynter.org/dg.lts/id.31/aid.46154/column.htm http://civilities.net/InternetPolls http://www.wired.com/news/politics/1,34748-0.html

sigh The less than 1% does not prove your point. The number of respondents is greater than the overall number of active Poser/D|S specific posters across the top ten sites. If the only place the survey had been advertised was inthe forums, this may be the case. It was not the only place -- those costs were associated with advertising it. All survey's are self selecting. Yes, all. Survey's are taken strictly on the basis of willingness to do so. Your concern is the random sample being representative of the overall user base. I believe it is, you do not. We both have valid reasons for our beliefs. Only time will say which of us is correct. As a matter of policy, the NCPP also opposes several other forms of polling, and for a very simple reason: the organization exists in order to further the goals of the members, who generally resent online polling. A great many established places do. To an extent, I feel that way as well. However, there's no other means available to do so that I'm aware of that wouldn't involve sizeable investment of the sort that would preclude the release of the data freely and publically. If you have a methodology that you feel is going to be more effective, please feel free to conduct your own survey and release the results publically and freely. If you want the data, have at it. Weight and interpret it as you feel correct. I haven't provided any weighting, haven't given anything other than a couple of basic stats that I pulled from it rather quickly. That's the analysis part of the equation, and is up to the end user of the data. Tunesy -- yes, it was. Won't happen again. I'll see ya all in June, when I do the next one.

well from what i have had time to read it would seem to say that there is absolutly no valid information on the poser market and their is no possible way to get any valid information on the poser market. so merchentes are either blindly following perceved trends, following requests from proactive individual (or small groups of) forum members or looking at the opinions of 609 "self-selected" users.

...that link arcady posted in #71 is enlightening. Just one page, a quick but informative read.

I don't think you intended it, ynsaen, but by not making an effort to alleviate obvious skews your poll ends up looking not only completely invalid, but rather like a blatant daz commercial.

That's an interesting analysis. I disagree. I think it points instead more to a rather large degree of market penetration. Look, say what ya want. I've now been defending this on three sites. I'm tired, and discouraged that something I put a lot of work into is being dissed as if it were some sort of bad thing. So I'm a teensy bit defensive. If you think it's crap, fine. THink that. AIn't nothin I'm gonna type gonna change your mind. There's the data, I'm gonna do another survey again down the road, I think the the data is good, useful, and worthwhile, and I gave it away for free to the community as a whole. No one's saying you have to use it. The information is valuable enough that a few of the larger sites have requested the information. Its something that I felt needed to be done, and the time was right, and I didn't feel that any other site was going to do it and make it publically available. I did something for the community, and I did it the best I could, and I'm going to keep doing it, and getting better, and ya know, at least I did something. Time will tell.

Oh yes. Don't get me wrong. I encourage your efforts, but it would be great if you could roll up your sleeves next time and think, "mmm. How can we get back some of the randomness we're lacking here?" I didn't realize how truly involved polling was until I read some of the links Acadia posted. Statistics is a funny animal. I always found calculus, geophysics and the like to be quite intuitive, but what 'seems' right with statistics frequently isn't. Here's a quote from one of Acadia's links: "The key reason that some polls reflect public opinion accurately and other polls are unscientific junk is how people were chosen to be interviewed. In scientific polls, the pollster uses a specific statistical method for picking respondents. In unscientific polls, the person picks himself to participate." ...the buzz words being "In unscientific polls, the person picks himself to participate". Maybe that could be eliminated some how next time? Anyway, good luck with it. Looks like a daunting task for a layman to me. I really admire your efforts.

That's actually not possible to do, Tunesy, in an open system. Think about it for a second. Unless you live in a police state, there is always a voluntary aspect to the poll, because the individual must choose to participate or not. The actual issue isn't "picks himself" -- it's how he ends up recieving that invitation to do so. Most scientific polls use an elimination algorithm on the final data gathered. What this means is that basically they would take the data offered above and sort it according to predefined criteria gathered primarily from previous polls and actually discard answers based on key demographic aspects (specifically: gender, income, zip code, and certain variable preferences). This algorithm utilizes a random generation rule as well, and, these days, is preprogrammed into the system for certain things such as phone surveys. Note the key there is the source of that algorithm, and the way it is implemented: after the collection process. The typical survey you see as a pretty snapshot in usa today with 500 respondents is actually pulled from a typical sampling of persons known to be willing to answer surveys. Usually, 2300 to 3100 are sampled, and then the algorithm is applied to reduce it down. Now, excepting the algorithm (which is an analysis level tool, not a data collecting tool) the methodology for getting the data is the same: the option is placed out there and the individuals choose to participate or not. In order to be sure the sample pool was wide enough, the survey was advertised across a great many sites and in several fields (the one I missed was education, which I need to find a method for getting in the next one). Language was a critical consideration as well (I had a spanish translation for it as well, but was unable to get it up and presented in time, so had to settle for only the german and French ones, and wasn't able to get a japanese one). The main impteus for the survey were newsletters and front page notices ont he major poser sites (which does skew things towards this overal community, it was intended as a community survey, so the effort was worthwhile). This ensured that the survey's reach went beyond the forums themselves and into the wider community that doesn't pay attention to the mad ramblings of us all. In order for the community as a whole to be able to be sampled randomly as that link describes it (and I know exactly what the point is -- one of my clients is a member of the NCPP that purchased and expanded on my previous poll from a few years back), there would need to essenitally be a single, combined database of all the various members of the community from which random samplings could be taken. That database would require basic demographic information already in it, or the culling algorithm would be needed to be used after the fact in order to reach the sampling rate specified. Establishing that database would require effort that's simply not possible: no site at present that I know can or would be willing to share their user information in order to form it, and I wasn't able to create a specific site for that purpose (registering to be eligible to take the quiz, essentially). There is too much competition between the various sites to allow for that level of cooperation on the scale that was involved here. So let's look at the numbers: I approached in a worldwide parking lot 200,000 people and asked them to answer a survey. Of that 200,000 people, 18,000 or so took a look. of that 18,000, 2100 started to do the survey. of that 2100, 700 or so finished it. That's an awfully random sample. Statistically speaking, it's roughly about as random as being able to randomly sample all of the purchasers across all of the main sites on a random basis -- which is how retail market research is done these days, as it's proven valid time and time again and is growing in popularity even more (and, I should note, from companies predominatly outside the ncpp as they are finding it more cost effective to move it in house). Since any of the sites doing so would be most unlikely to make that information freely available (which was the purpose of doing this and in part why the final results are so large a sample), that isn't an option. My own site -- Odd Ditty Foundry -- doesn't presently have a large enough population sample registered to be effective, and, again, to be honest, had I used it I wouldn't have shared the data. Basically, I did indeed roll up my sleeves. My problem isn't not understanding the nature of how to conduct a survey, but how to manage an online one of this scope with a limited toolset. One benefit of this experience has been that I was able to acquire a much more advanced tool for surveying that is more inline with my original goals and gives me a greater level of flexibility and control over the process and should reduce the difficulties involved in this one and still retain the integrity with which I've tried to operate this one -- and better, long term. It's also shown me a great many of the reasons that such a thing hasn't been done before, and why the community is still suffering from a huge disconnect between perception and reality insofar as the marketplace is concerned. As a community we need to be a little less cutthroat about some things, and a little more about others. Among those things that need to grow are the areas outside the "mainline" area where the "money" is -- particularly if we're going to grow and improve the overall reputation that users of poser have in the wider world. THis survey is one of the ways to do that. I resist going into this level of detail about my methods and motivations usually because, well, It's boring, it's never easily summated, and it means I make long ass posts that rendo always seems to lock on. But I do consider all of those things. I planned this survey for over a year. The questions alone took two months. I began the follow up in December, and made several changes in the time since the survey started, and now even more that I have this improved software for it. The arguments about the validity of the data are mostly off the mark -- they fail to take into account the fullness of the scope of it, or work off of aspects of analysis. I'm not supplying analysis (and I keep kicking myself for the observations I made in the first post), just the raw data. The rest is up to the individuals.

...my bad. I shouldn't have used the word "eliminated". Sorry. The point was to emphasize randomness though.

oh, absolutely. And, well, eliminated is as good a word as culled, lol I did consider several possibilities for handling it, but none of them would be able to produce the level of responses sought in order to make the sample effective. Had the final sample only had 400 or so repsonses, it wouldn't have been an effective survey, and the value of it would be much more limited. The "magic number" for a good base really is 600, and this one squeaked by in the end, lol.

I finally had a chance to look at the csv files and I am not sure on how to figure out the results :) I am almost completely unfamiliar with excel but it does open the files but I am really not sure how to figure out the results since the things are all repeated multiple times. Any clues on how to figure it out? Sadly, I cannot use the Access file if that is more concise. Thanks

Carefully? ok, yeah, that's not a great answer. Alright, here's a basic rundown of what I'm doing slowly but surely. I'm slowly combining all the files into a single spreadsheet. The first, and most important file, is the "MainFile". The very first column in the mainfile is "ID". This is the key to assembling the whole thing. Each of the other files has 2 columns. One of those columns is "owner". The number in that column corresponds to the number of the ID in column one of the mainfile. I'm taking each of the secondary files and manually inserting them into new columns in my MainFile, but since all the secondary pages have multiple answers, I'm having to go slowly and do it bit by bit. In Excell, you can open each of the pages in a new "page" within a single file (I'm stuck using open office.org and not very familiar with how it works). THis allows you to actually use excell to tie them together without all the copy paste stuff, but I'm not certain how to do it from memory (but I know there is a tutorial on doing so at the microsoft office site). Once you get all the data together, you start collating it according to different questions that you are going to ask. FOr example, let's say that you want to know how many poser 6 users are using the figure Jessie. First, you'll need to isolate all the poser 6 users. Then, from them, you'll go through the Figures columns/sheets and find all the spots where they selected Jessie as a figure. You can expand the question, as well, and look at how many of them are of what age group, how much they are willing to spend on items for her, and even what Items they would most likely want to see for her. I will be the first person to admit that the information isn't easy to use. THe reason the database is is useful is that it allows you to simply create queries once it's structured. Without the database, you have to do things the old fashioned way, and I'm still creeping through the set up of it, myself. That said, I'm hoping to get it all set up as a db on my website, but then I'll have to come up with a query form and such, lol. Generally speaking, it's a case of count it up and divide by 609. That won't give you the most accurate results, but it will give you a good guideline on how things work in general.

Thanks .. I will try and figure it out when I have excel around (it is only at work for me)