You grossly underestimate our government......

I'm sure if it is laid out in the contract, they'll expect to be compensated fairly.....kinda like anyone that has a job I suspect.

It's nothing money couldn't make happen but the question is, is it money well spent or are we spending money to learn what we already know? I'm sure someome with knowledge in stats could answer that question.

Thats fine I wouldn't expect less....we get hammered for more money on other things what is a buck or two a head for this....:)

For "funzies" some of our more computer savy folks should set up an online survey for us here to fill out and see what comes back?

I am not against making informed decisions...my gripe is when you have a zone that only 10 people responded to a survey out of a possible several hundred.....the numbers don't tell the story.

LC

I agree but when you have 10 or 15 out of 100 hundred the picture is much clearer.

The smaller the sample size the higher the margin of error. In a sample size that small the margin of error is upwards of 20%.

LC

Not that I know alot about stats but I think you might be calculating the error margain for an opinion poll as opposed to an information survey and I don't think that number you cite takes into account that fact that the survey was conducted for multiple years rather than one.....but I could be mistaken.

Actually just ran the numbers through a couple confidence level calculators and to acheive 99% certainty with a 1% margain of error, you need to survey 16,753 people if you include all resident Wildlife Certificate buyers. Most polls only run a 95% certainty so these numbers are pretty restrictive. I'd guess that is pretty close to the sample size that SRDhas; perhaps it's a bit lower. That didn't factor in multiple year results either. Something to consider when looking at spending large amounts of money on a mandatory survey.

16,753 is the aggregate. You need to apply a distribution factor (perhaps tags allocated per WMU for draws at least) to determine how many people are required per WMU for that kind of accuracy. That would be ideal anyway.

I would suspect it is proportional but as I say, I don't know a lot about stats.