Trail Use was Re: [at-l] Psychology 101

[kahley7@ptd.net (kahley)]

At 11:12 PM 8/12/01 -0600, Ron Martino wrote:

>         Day users made up 38%, overnight/short trips 32%, section hikers 15%,
>thru-hikers 18%. (I rounded, see the study for more exact numbers. The
>methodology of this report seems on par with other recreational studies.
>(Among my many sins, I study recreational management at one time.)

Wow!  That percentage of thru-hikers seems amazingly high.....
and contrary to other numbers and personal experience as
well.  I wonder if the timing of the survey had anything to do with it?

Please correct my math but if there are 2000 thrus and that's 18%?

2000 divided by 18 times 100 equals waaay less users than I'd think possible..
I rounded too <G>

If you polled last Wednesday, here in Pa, I'd bet you'd have a 98%
thruhiker rate (the other 2% being englishmen and their mad dogs <g>)
cause only those subsets of users would have been on the trail in that
heat.  In general, in my experience, a high percentage of Trail use in Pa
is thruhikers in the summer, maybe even 50 % combined section hikers
and thru hikers but for sure, not in the other three seasons.
I wonder why they didn't poll in the Spring or Winter?  And i haven't
yet seen the precise points where the sampling was done.  You could
skew  a survey pretty easily towards day hikers if you polled near a
good, accessible view point or towards weekenders by polling on a
popular loop.

Would the concentration of effort at Baxter have a skewing effect?
Or maybe the thruhikers were more likely to return or complete the
questionnaire?  This is pretty interesting stuff none the less, but I
am having a problem with those numbers.......just seems outta whack.

Maybe it's the high response from GA.  Everyone is a thru hiker in GA <g>

Surveys are fun but often lead to more questions than answers for me.
Speaking of surveys...back to compiling the Women's survey ......
And ya'll can be glad i'm not the one doing the math on that one!



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