The 2,318,140 That Got Away

[Steve Spiller]

Very good point Jeff.

Evan is right, but how do we put this pile of cr*p survey straight?

E.A rod licence sales figures would only show how many anglers had bought licences, it wouldn't give a true reflection of angling participation, but it would be a start.

How about the E.A including a survey in their annual (waste of of money magazine) "have you fished in the last four weeks?" With an address to reply to, or a web address to vote on?

We need to put these MORI pratts straight!

 

[Paul C]

The thing is, why does it need to be the last four weeks?

Many participation sports are seasonal.
As mentioned, fishing close seasons, salmon, coarse etc and the same applies elsewhere which make this flawed.

Take cricket and tennis. How many avid players of these sports will have participated outside of the summer months?

Golf, fishing etc will see many participants pack up for the winter months.

If it's supposed to measure actual participants, it's not. At the very best, if worded correctly it will indicate volumes who participate all year round, regardless of whether it's possible to do that.

 

[Frank "Chubber" Curtis]

According to the survey nearly twice as many participate in yoga as in fishing. I know many folk that go fishing but don't know a soul that does yoga.
Surveys are always flawed not only by the questions that are asked but also because the people questioned are picked at random.
Ask London city workers who they'll vote for at the next election and you'll get twice as many say Conservative than Labour. Repeat the same survey over a number of areas and you'll get different results in each one so how the hell can you come up with an accurate figure.
The problem with the Sport England survey is that part of the question "during the past four weeks". It should have asked "what sport do you participate in regularly throughout the year". I suspect the answer would have been very different and much nearer to the truth.
The main angling bodies and the EA must refute these false figures nationally before they are used by our enemies to do untold damage to our sport.
I don't wish to question the integrity of Sport England but methinks there may be a hidden agenda buried somewhere that guided the way the survey was conducted.

 

[MarkTheSpark]

The problem is probably the word 'sport' - I don't think angling is a sport in the conventional sense, any more than darts and snooker.

Most people think of sport as involving rigorous exercise, and apart from lugging all the tackle around, most of angling is spent on your backside. Maybe the interviewers weren't taking angling to be a sport. Who knows.

What we do know is that it's a rubbish poll.

 

[Ron 'The Hat' Clay (ACA)]

Angling is a true sport, along with shooting and hunting.

Football, cricket, athletics, snooker, darts etc. etc. are games!

 

[Ron 'The Hat' Clay (ACA)]

And by the way, there is no such thing as a "spectator sport"!

 

[Matthew Keating]

Some good points made...

I'd add that, as was clear from the 'tone' of the answers from that Q&A, MORI will not 'officially' admit that results for fishing were suprisingly low, because that would imply that the survey was flawed and, ergo, needs to be re-done. This would of course be bad for them from a cost/time point of view, not to mention a loss of credibility surrounding poor question terminology and methodology. They'd rather keep schtum than help angling out by suggesting the figure looked a little low...

As such they are hiding behind bland statements defending the 'statistical veracity' of the survey, some of which are reasonable and others that miss the point.

By extension they are indirectly stating that the results are 'accurate'. The clear disparity between the no. of licences sold and the 280,000 figure is explained away as many people not having been fishing within 4 weeks, which is very disingenuous, and they know it.

I gather that the survey was done over a whole year (in an attempt to eliminate seasonal bias), but this still suggests that at any one time only approx 1 in 10 anglers have been fishing in the last month. This should ring alarm bells!

I'd imagine some people at the EA would have a few things to say too!