Online Broker Survey: How We Crunched the Numbers

TheStreet.com's latest Online Broker Survey drew more than 2,400 responses rating readers' experiences with more than 130 online brokers. We've changed a number of things since our last broker survey, conducted in February and March.

This time around, we expanded the ballot so you could rate more brokers (write-in votes were allowed in both surveys) on more criteria and added some new questions on topics such as margin calls and direct-access trading. We also simplified the rating system a bit, asking you to judge brokers on a three-point scale (excellent, good, poor), rather than the four-point scale (excellent, good, average, poor) we used last time. Otherwise, our methodology has remained much the same. Here's how we crunched the numbers.

The Voters

This was a reader's survey, not an expert's survey. It was available free to any visitor to TheStreet.com or RealMoney.com from Aug. 23 through Sept. 17. Could brokers have filled in our ballots themselves and asked their employees and grandmothers to do the same? Sure. This was not a scientific sampling of opinion. ...