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Our Blogs Open Sauce Open source survey: many questions remain
Our Blogs Open Sauce Open source survey: many questions remain | Open source survey: many questions remain |
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| by Sam Varghese | |
| Tuesday, 13 May 2008 | |
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Page 3 of 6 He wrote: "Compared to a market like the US these numbers are very small. However, the Waughs estimate the respondents are equal to roughly 10% of the individuals and 25% of the companies in the Australian open source community. If they are correct in this then the sample size can be said to be statistically significant. The figure for companies is likely to be correct, but the assumption for individual numbers has been based on the membership of community organisations, mailing list subscriptions, user group attendance figures and other information. I would have liked some more information on this; for instance, were attempts made to cross-reference the various sources and thereby identify each individual who is on a mailing list and is a member of a user group? Indeed, are user groups already counted as being community organisations (namely, organisations that make up the open source community)?" This made me realise that I was not the only person thinking in this direction. And so I set out to ask a few questions. The final report says: "We worked closely with psychometricians and statisticians provided by NICTA, our primary research partner, to ensure the end-to-end quality of the research. While our sponsors and supporters provided feedback at numerous points throughout the project lifecycle, this report is the result of independent analysis by Waugh Partners. It is based on data collected through a pair of online surveys held between October and December 2007." An official spokesman for NICTA told iTWire: "NICTA was a sponsoring partner and was not responsible for data collection or statistical analysis. NICTA did not analyse the data in depth, but we did review it and were satisfied that the sample was representative and that the data provided was of good quality and integrity." There appears to be some difference between the two versions but I'm sure the intelligent reader will be able to pick it up. The use of the word "census" to describe this survey is misleading. A census covers all individuals of a particular subset; this is a survey as it only covers a small part of a target population. |
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