T alk about fickleness. Engineers are as subject as anyone else to the swings and arrows of economic, political and social fortune.

Evidence? The "class of '88" EE Times "Salary & Opinion" survey respondents were asked which nation would be the technical leader in 1996. Less than half picked the United States, and 42 percent thought we'd be speaking Japanese for business by this time.

Wrong, say this year's survey respondents, 85 percent of whom put the United States squarely at the top of the engineering and technical world.

As recently as 1992, our survey respondents moaned about the state of American electronics, with a pallid 19 percent describing their industry as "rising." Today, 65 percent see it "progressing."

There's a lesson here: Business cycles shift at warp speed. Perceptions change on a dime. Today's cocky rooster is tomorrow's dinner.

We have a lot to celebrate in 1996: higher salaries, robust job markets, soaring stock options. But we're already wondering what will the EE Times "Worldwide Salary & Opinion Survey" turn up in the year 2000?

We don't know, of course. And that's part of the excitement of the engineering field. Our rea ders turn corners at top speed. Once in a while, they hit a wall. Other times, they spin out. The best of them roar down a straightaway, ready to take on another blind curve. We'll be here, cheering them on.

For this year's survey, some 3,200 surveys were mailed to U.S. readers of EE Times on June 13 with a postage-paid business-reply envelope and $1 incentive enclosed. The cutoff for receipt of responses was July 26.

There were 891 total responses in the United States. That represents a response rate of 27.9 percent, taking into account 15 undeliverables from the post office.

Once again, we collaborated with the Japanese publication Nikkei Electronics , whose readers responded to a shorter version of our survey. Some 445 responses were received out of 1,400 mailings to that newspaper's readers. We thank our Japanese colleagues for their participation.

The sampling, tabulation and analysis of the data were done in accordance with accepted research practices. Percentages b ased on a sample of this size (891) have a 95 percent confidence interval of between 1.4 and 3.3.

At least, those confidence levels hold for this year. No guarantees about that S-curve you'll have to negotiate down the road.

E-mail me at bbelling@eet.cmp.com

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