State of the Hobby

Greetings fellow operators! First and foremost, I hope everyone is staying healthy out there. The COVID-19 global pandemic has, for better or worse, certainly cause a large amount of change in the world today. While I was originally hoping to release this survey mid-March, due to the pandemic response I was forced to change this up. I trust many others have had to make similar adjustments, so I hope folks understand. That said, the time has come for the survey to be released! I wanted to ensure I could devote the proper amount of time to promoting and administering the survey before I released it. Things have calmed down a bit in my world and I'm ready to do that. If you have not had a chance to see the results from previous surveys, they are available here: 2018 2017 2019 The survey this year is 100% anonymous (which was common feedback I received) and any demographic questions are optional - this data does help me drive better analysis but is completely optional.

I wanted to drop a quick note out to those who follow our communications. Due to the increasing and radical changes in daily life due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 State of the Hobby survey has been postponed. Please subscribe for more details on when the survey will be released. Stay safe out there and God bless.

Greetings fellow operators! I hope 2020 finds you well and excited for another year in amateur radio! I wanted to drop a quick note to let everyone know I've already begun work on the 2020 State of the Hobby survey, which will hopefully be released in mid-March. I typically kick the survey off when March begins, but this year I will be traveling during that time. I want to be able to devote the appropriate level of time to the survey so will prep ahead of time and release mid-March. Be sure subscribe (if you have not already) to the blog to get an email notification when it's released. I wanted to go over a few things for 2020, both what has changed and what has stayed the same. What Has Changed Anonymity - This survey can now be taken completely anonymously. You can provide a call if you'd like, but it's not required nor is a Google sign-in. I suspect there will be many attempts at data manipulation (there has been every year I've done this) and working w

The crew over at the ICQ Podcast talk about the State of the Hobby survey, among other topics. It's certainly a bit odd listening to a panel of well-respected hams discuss the project. Many thanks to them for the feedback and for the flowers. Frank, if you're reading this, I may have to pick your brain for the 2020 survey! :-)

Radio amateurs have spoken and the results are in! I truly hope you read and enjoy the report below. It represents approximately 120 hours of blood, sweat and tears each spring, donated out of love for amateur radio and a sense of duty to help in some way. Share these results with your clubs, ham friends and family, and most importantly challenge them (and yourself) to use the information to enact positive change. We all know this hobby isn't one we can do solo - it's in our best interest to improve and grow it each and every year. It doesn't have to be a grand gesture either - to quote the greatest movie ever, Contact , starting the marvelous Jodie Foster, "small moves Ellie, small moves". Do something small within your community or club to positively promote the hobby and create that ripple. As always, if you are interested in receiving email updates please subscribe to the blog. The yearly survey, results and information will be posted there and by subscr

If you have not subscribed to this channel, I highly recommend this! Great content from a fellow ham!

And by we're I mean me. Each year I attempt to make the State of the Hobby survey a bit more geocentric. While amateur radio is something that can be enjoyed around the global, some of the issues and topics are very regionally specific. The viewpoints and concerns of hams outside of the US are just as important, and can offer fantastic insights if properly collected. In an effort to increase the global nature of the questions solicited, I'd like to partner with a few hams from around the world for 2020. I'd like this to be a small panel of hams who have specific insights into both questions pertaining to their specific regions and into those questions on the general portion that may not be applicable. Specifically, I'm looking for representation from the following continents / regions / countries: Europe (e.g. UK, Western Europe, Eastern Europe) Oceania (e.g. Australia / NZ) South America Central America Russia Africa Japan China India Idea

During the course of this survey and it's development, some people have mentioned launching a Patreon page as a way to support the initiative. While I administer the survey out of interest and as a service to those who read the results, I've decided to do just that. The survey is currently financially sustainable out of my pocket, however I'd like to grow this each year and with that comes some opportunity to invest in new platforms. To that end, while Google Survey is the right price (free), it's not without it's limitations. I've received feedback that some of the questions lack clear or functional responses, something due in part to the Google platform. Others have also shown concern over the hosting of this survey on Google itself, and while I don't share in those concerns, it doesn't make them any less valid. I'm going start a Patreon as an option for those who would like to financially support this initiative. This survey will always rema

Get ready operators - the 2019 State of the Hobby Survey is here! I first want to take a moment to sincerely thank everyone for the fantastic participation in 2018. Our inaugural survey in 2017 found around 600 responses but 2018 came booming in with nearly 3,000 responses, voicing their opinions! A huge shout out to the blog / websites owners, podcast producers and large clubs for taking the time to promote the survey within their respective audiences - I could not have done this without you! If you have not had a chance to see the results from previous years, they are listed here: 2018 2017 The survey started out in 2017 as simple curiosity. While browsing Reddit I began to notice several users posting surveys for highly specific topics. I made sure to participate yet often wondered what the results were. I then decided to host my own survey, to collect the opinions from the community on a variety of topics for comparison over the years. I wanted to ensure I made the r

Greetings folks - 2019 is upon us! I hope everyone had a safe and enjoyable new year. With a new year comes a new annual survey, and another chance to pick the brains of operators worldwide for what they like and dislike about amateur radio, as well as their opinions. Last year was a fantastic survey and I highly recommend checking out the results, if you have not done so. I am eternally thankful for all the blogs, sites and podcasts that picked up the 2018 State of the Hobby survey and push it out to such a wide audience. This brings us to now. I spent a fair amount of time sifting through comments and suggestions from last year and how I'd like to incorporate that feedback. I received some excellent ideas and I think you'll find the changes to the survey to be more inclusive and more holistic than before. The idea behind this survey is to grow each year. I will be spending the month of February preparing and polishing the survey for release in March. This year the survey

The results are in! I truly hope you read and enjoy the results from this year. Between the survey, the data modeling and cleansing, making the analytics and presentation, I'd say this is about 100 hours worth of work. It was certainly fun, and while you may think I have a pretty demented definition of fun....no actually you'd be right about that, no argument here. If you are interested in participating next year, please subscribe to my blog. New surveys and results will be posted here so by subscribing you will get any and all updates. Anyway - on to the results!

The 2018 survey is now closed! I want to extend a HUGE thank you to everyone who participate, and to those who passed this on to other hams as well. This year had a much larger turnout that 2017 and hopefully this trend will continue. So - the 65 million dollar question is...when will the results be posted? Short answer is anywhere from 4-8 weeks from now. My next steps are to pull the data out of the survey and begin to cleanse and normalize. Each question with an open ended response can be anywhere from 10-15 hours of work, depending on the variance of the response. It's important to me that each response is valued, as a result I want to ensure this is done well. As an example, I provided some options for "How did you find this survey?" and also left it open to people to enter in their own choices. Some example responses I received are: Email Emailed Emailed from another ham Got an email from my dad Gmail Someone mailed it to me online I

I had posted around a few weeks ago that the survey was due to close on 13-MAR-2018 for this year. That was originally my plan, but you know how plans go.... Our good friends on the other side of the globe, WA Amateur Radio News were kind enough to feature the survey on their weekly podcast (NewsWest Weekly Broadcast) and website. They reached out and asked if the survey could be reopened for a few weeks to allow their audience to participate - I couldn't or wouldn't say no to some more data. Special thanks to Glynn VK6PAW for promoting the survey and for helping give radio amateurs in Western Australia a voice. 73!

Once again I'm hosting a "State of the Hobby" survey for 2018.  This started out in 2017 as simple curiosity. While browsing Reddit I began to notice several users posting surveys for highly specific topics. I made sure to participate yet often wondered what the results were. I then decided to host my own survey, to collect the opinions from the community on topics that I cared about. I wanted to ensure I made the results widely available for anyone to consume for whatever reason. This is the second year I've hosted this survey. Last year I had 688 unique respondents. While this is a good amount of responses, given the amount of amateur radio operators out there, I'm striving to increase this amount each year of the survey. I'm a year older and a year wiser, as such I've listened to user feedback on my survey from last year and attempted to incorporate that constructive feedback moving forward. Please, help me by completing the survey and passing i

Here are the compiled results from the 2017 (inaugural) run of the State of the Hobby survey. I had 688 unique responses from over the globe. I used various social media outlets to promote this survey. Facebook turned out to be the best vehicle, in terms of receptiveness. Reddit was characteristically nasty about it. I don't know what I expected..... 2017 State of the Hobby Results

This survey started out as simple curiosity. While browsing Reddit on the amateur radio subreddit I began to notice several users posting surveys for highly specialized topics. I completed the surveys and began to wonder what the results were. I then decided to host my own survey, to collect the opinions from the community on topics that I cared about. I wanted to make sure I made the results widely available for anyone to consume for whatever reason. Again, this is not meant to be an exhausting study of the hobby, but about the nagging questions I had about the community as a whole. I hear time and time again things like "the hobby is growing, just look at the licenses being issued!", which is but one figure that can indicate the growth of amateur radio. It's not the only factor however, and I wanted to know more about that. I also wanted to know about new, emerging facets of an already diverse hobby. Lastly I wondered about perceptions of operators, which can indi