3 Respondent Pool

A total of 422 surveys were returned to the Social Sciences Branch at the conclusion of the 2022 cost survey. Profit calculations were first performed for all observations followed by a series of steps to eliminate those observations that were deemed inappropriate to include.

3.1 Filtering of Observations

The first filtering step specified that all surveys must have answered at least one cost-related question. This step eliminated 55 observations, bringing the total number to 367. The second filtering step specified that the responding vessel must be commercially active (revenues >$0) during 2022. A further 46 observations were dropped, bringing the total to 321.

Following completion of the initial filtering, a few other steps were performed. The 2022 cost survey included the nine sections listed under Cost Survey Background. For each response, the number of survey sections skipped were counted, where a skipped section was any case in which all questions within the section were left blank. For this exercise, five survey sections were evaluated. Sections 3-5 were evaluated in entirety while section 2 was divided into sub-sections of vessel repairs/upgrades questions and vessel fees/insurance questions. If a survey skipped multiple sections, it was removed from the dataset. A total of 17 observations skipped multiple survey sections, bringing the total to 304. An additional 12 observations out of the remaining 304 skipped one survey section. These cases were further evaluated to look at the specific section skipped. Four out of the 12 only skipped the crew payment section. Since these were all small vessels with relatively low costs and operating profit, assuming there was no crew on board was deemed appropriate. The other 8 observations that skipped one survey section were dropped, resulting in a final dataset of 296 observations. Out of a possible 31 questions answered, these observations provided responses to 28 questions on average, with a range of 20-31 questions answered.