Agenda - Council Work Session - 07/22/2014

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Question D13: do we need to keep if D14 covers? We do need to keep question D13. The two question series is modeled after the census, which asks ethnicity (Hispanic or not) separately from race (white, Black, Asian, etc.). We have to use this series of questions because the results will be weighted to match the Census numbers for Ramsey. This would be true for The NCS or a custom survey. NOT DONE, for the reason identified above General comment: we are concerned with the general public having access to the online survey for statistical significance purposes. The survey should only allowed for people whom were targeted in your statistical significant pool (i.e. mailed surveys). If we don't have the ability to protect this concern —please pull the online survey option. We have the ability to look at IP addresses and time stamps and other patterns of responses to identify instances of sharing links outside of the scientific sample. From doing this, we have found ballot -stuffing behavior to be very rare for general citizen surveys or involving a very small number of responses. If that is not reassuring enough for Council, then we are happy to forgo the online survey. After discussion with NRC, we decided to pull the online survey option. The NRC does not have the ability to effectively track people filling out surveys/disable people from sharing an online version of the survey. DONE, online survey was pulled. General comment: our council would like a 'comment' section added to the bottom of each page (where appropriate). NOTE: we do not expect you to tabulate results. We can simply review said comments internally. Please keep this section as short and concise as possible. Also, please indicate comments are not required (only if desired). The survey can accommodate open-ended questions on the last page as space allows. Even for a custom survey we would advise limiting the number of open-ended questions and keeping them until the end to avoid discouraging respondents from completing the survey; just having the blank response lines there (even with the text that it is optional) can turn the survey into a high -burden request. It looks like there is just enough space to fit such a question in on the last page, so I have gone ahead and included it. Since you don't require any data entry, the add -on to provide a CD with all of the scanned surveys is just $50 compared to $1500 per question for data entry and analysis. DONE, but only on one page for the reasons stated above. Due to the several changes we made to the 'template' National Citizen Survey —are we in danger of losing the standard/professional/high-quality reporting? We want to make sure our Council receives a quality/useful product and comparisons. I'd say we are pretty close to keeping it an NCS survey with all of the good value that that package offers. Right now, any standard, unaltered item on the survey will have benchmark comparisons. If more items need to be added, deleted or reformatted outside of the customized sections (including adding open ended questions before the end of the survey), then we need to move to the custom option. Trying to keep it to the same budget level would involve significantly paring down the reporting [if we become a 'custom' survey], but I understand that not every community is the same and getting the questions just right is an important priority. DONE, we will still get the high quality reporting and comparisons.