Home  Methodology
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This survey is not statistically valid research and is for entertainment purposes only. The opinions expressed and results gathered are not the opinions of Sailboat Owners, Inc., nor is Sailboat Owners, Inc. qualified to conduct valid, reliable market studies. The information presented is to be used at your own risk.
More than 5,000 surveys were collected from April through October of 2008. All surveys were conducted online. Participants were solicited through SailboatOwners.com web sites and our Monday Mail Newsletter, as well as some sources of online advertising.
Participants were not screened or verified, however, participants were asked to use the following guidelines:
- Complete as many surveys as you like, but just one per boat.
- Please limit surveys to production sailboats. There's really not much point in evaluating your custom, one-off S&S schooner because nobody cares but you.
- Evaluate a boat you have sailed, have owned in the past, or currently own. If you didn't/don't own the boat, we ask that you are experienced in the general care of the boat as would normally be associated with ownership. The Beneteau you charted for a week in the BVI probably doesn't meet that criteria.
- Don't bother to answer questions that don't apply to your boat. For example, if you don't have a galley, don't rate the galley.
- Please answer the questions honestly. Objective owner input is so much more interesting than cheerleading.
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A complete list of questions can be found here.
Prior to publication, the surveys were scrubbed to remove:
- Duplicate reviews of the same boat by the same owner
- Scores in categories which are not applicable, i.e., trailering for a Hunter 46 or a galley score for an Oday Daysailer.
- All surveys which rated a boat perfect in all categories.
- Surveys which were identified as an organized effort by an owner's association to inflate resale value.
We then eliminated all boats with fewer than twelve valid surveys. (The average sample size among the 99 published boats was 28.4 surveys. The maximum was 126. The smallest sample size among the top ten boats was 15 surveys.) For the remaining 99 boats, all scores were averaged by question and all question averages were summed. To that score we added 2x the average of the Overall Satisfaction question (essentially giving it double weight in the results) because we believe it is possible for a boat to be greater than the sum of its parts.
The final score was multiplied by 1.25 to create an index value. A perfect score on the index is 100 points.
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