Is ScubaBoard representative of the diving population at large?

[Nemrod]

I am nothing like any of y'all. I am an outlier. N

 

[RJP]

HA! That's funny. I remember radio.

(PS No one listens to the radio anymore. Music that someone else picked out for me? How 1989.)

n=1

As you well know, not everyone responds to every medium... and some don't respond to any.

Radio, for instance, is a highly effective medium for certain demographics and timeslots. (You do know there are lots of radio stations that broadcast things other than music... right? Lots of people listen to those stations.)

 

[Storker]

n=1

Which, in true SB fashion, is more than enough to base a conclusion on

 

[phlegm]

lol I like this place but it certainly isn't representative of the community at large! You guys are so US-centric you'd think it was a specifically American forum haha

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

I think SB might be slightly representative.
I see a few world wide participants, mostly midwest and east US participants, and a very small percentage of west coast participants in relation to the population of the most populated state (CA).
It's hard to say who lands here. There are complete new divers and old salts alike, young and old, but maybe what attracts them all is a general computer geekiness (not meant to be deragatory) and a tendancy to seek out discussion forums in specific hobbies (there are literally thousands of them). Maybe some are isolated/lonely and use it as a social crutch, maybe some are into a style so specialized that they can only find like minded divers on the net to network with. In my travels I sometimes ask people if they go on Scubaboard,diver.net,divernet.com,or any others and usually the answer is no.
So then what about all the rest that just dive and go on about their every day lives that could care less about dive forums? do they do anything different than people here?

Does that very small sample on SB x 1,000,000 make up the average diving population...who knows? maybe.

 

[Frosty]

IMO scubaboard is NOT representative of divers as a whole. In fact far from it. IMO the majority of scuba divers are either occasional vacation divers or do a few dives and occasionally come back to see the pretty fishes etc OR see scuba as a means to the end of hunting and gathering.

 

[Searcaigh]

There must be several hundred divers here in UAE, perhaps over a thousand, but I only know of around ten who post here on SB

 

[RJP]

I think SB might be slightly representative.

For anyone who missed the follow-up thread with the results...

http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/ba...-divers-preliminary-analysis.html#post7290821

Many will be surprised.