So how many boats are there in the UK?

[barry frye]

Dear Tranona, firstly I am not wasting my time in doing research where no clear answer is offered, this is why people with enquiring minds do research! Human academic advancement and intellectual enquiry is never wasted. The only time wasted for me is replying to your trite arrogance. Dick!
Incidentally I have now found an accurate data source which has provided me with an +/- 10% accurate answer.

 

[Allan]

Like most people, I'm sure, I would be interested in the answer and source.
Allan

 

[pvb]

I fear you won't get an answer, barry frye seems to have departed...

 

[Resolution]

Like most people, I'm sure, I would be interested in the answer and source.
Allan

As I would as well.

By the way, OP, I think you are being a little unfair to Tranoma whose reply was realistic rather than arrogant. If you had followed these forums for as many years as I have , you would know that his knowledge of yachting and the yachting industry in the UK is truly substantial.

 

[Tranona]

Dear Tranona, firstly I am not wasting my time in doing research where no clear answer is offered, this is why people with enquiring minds do research! Human academic advancement and intellectual enquiry is never wasted. The only time wasted for me is replying to your trite arrogance. Dick!
Incidentally I have now found an accurate data source which has provided me with an +/- 10% accurate answer.

Having spent half a lifetime supervising university student projects many of this type (as well as being involved in the marine industry since 1976) perhaps I should expand on why I made the observation.

Firstly your claim to a level of confidence in your findings. How can you have that level of confidence when you are trying to measure something that is not only unknown, but almost certainly unknowable? The best you can get is a guess, which you might be able to say is a better guess than other guesses, or as it agrees with them is a "good" guess.

When you have an ill defined, fragmented and private population such as "number of boats in UK" you can only guess based on the assumptions you make about what it is you are measuring and how you are going to measure it. These assumptions may well be determined by such questions as who wants to know, why do they want to know and what they are going to do with the results.

Good research requires a clear research question and simply wanting to know the number of boats in the UK is not a good question, but rather just a topic of interest. You need to do some desk work and reading to refine that broad question into series of real questions to which you might be able to get some meaningful answers. Having seen the way that others who have attempted this question have gone about it I can assure you it is not easy.

Then you have to decide on your methodology, and again, unless you are just plundering the results of other research, any methodology that stands any chance of getting and processing reasonable data is way beyond the resources of an individual.

In my experience most projects of this type fail because they are just too big and general and the best they end up with is a discussion on methodology and its limitations in relation to the aim of the project. Successful individual research projects usually start with very modest aims, clear achievable objectives and sound methodology, all backed of course by a sound theoretical framework in which the research is set.

I may of course be doing the "granny sucking eggs" bit, but the naivety of your two posts suggests you might want to consider such things.

 

[bigwow]

Dear Tranona, firstly I am not wasting my time in doing research where no clear answer is offered, this is why people with enquiring minds do research! Human academic advancement and intellectual enquiry is never wasted. The only time wasted for me is replying to your trite arrogance. Dick!
Incidentally I have now found an accurate data source which has provided me with an +/- 10% accurate answer.

Only been on here 5 mins and on first name terms with Tranona!