Agenda - Parks and Recreation Commission - 01/08/2015

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The National Citizen SurveyT" Figure 1: Location of Survey Recipients 81st -M. NW— \ I O Y I I C � _ 0 k I ay[ona ",If Club • � a �� • • 16 `r ' . ! Tv [IM IM I, Ln N Kel—, R_'a Like P", ftrr rind Iu F. a s is TTT iles Survey Recipients in Ramsey, MN • Survey Recipients lf Survey Administration and Response Selected households received three mailings, oneweek apart, beginning in August 2014. The first mailing was a prenotification postcard announcing the upcoming survey. The next mailing contained a letter from the Mayor inviting the household to participate, a questionnaire and a postage -paid return envelope. The final mailing contained a reminder letter, another survey and a postage -paid return envelope. The second cover letter asked those who had not completed the survey to do so and those who had already done so to refrain from turning in another survey. Completed surveys were collected over the following six weeks. About 2% of the 1,200 surveys mailed were returned becausethe housing unit was vacant or the postal servicewas unable to deliver the survey as addressed. Of the remaining 1,174 households that received the survey, 430 completed the survey, providing an overall response rate of 37 %; average response rates for a mailed resident survey range from 25% to 40 %. Gonillaence i ntervalls It is customary to describe the precision of estimates made from surveys by a "leve] of confidence" and accompanying "confidence interval" (or margin of error). A traditional level of confidence, and the one used here, is 95 %. The 95% confidence interval can be any size and quantifies the sampling error or imprecision of the survey results because some residents' opinions are relied onto estimate all residents' opinions.' 'A 95% confidence interval indicates that for every 100 random samples of this many residents, 95 of the confidence intervals created will include the "true" population response. This theory is applied in practice to mean that the "true" perspective of the target population lies 30 Or r 1 P w r,�.♦ r� % Iva [IM IM I, Ln N Kel—, R_'a Like P", ftrr rind Iu F. a s is TTT iles Survey Recipients in Ramsey, MN • Survey Recipients lf Survey Administration and Response Selected households received three mailings, oneweek apart, beginning in August 2014. The first mailing was a prenotification postcard announcing the upcoming survey. The next mailing contained a letter from the Mayor inviting the household to participate, a questionnaire and a postage -paid return envelope. The final mailing contained a reminder letter, another survey and a postage -paid return envelope. The second cover letter asked those who had not completed the survey to do so and those who had already done so to refrain from turning in another survey. Completed surveys were collected over the following six weeks. About 2% of the 1,200 surveys mailed were returned becausethe housing unit was vacant or the postal servicewas unable to deliver the survey as addressed. Of the remaining 1,174 households that received the survey, 430 completed the survey, providing an overall response rate of 37 %; average response rates for a mailed resident survey range from 25% to 40 %. Gonillaence i ntervalls It is customary to describe the precision of estimates made from surveys by a "leve] of confidence" and accompanying "confidence interval" (or margin of error). A traditional level of confidence, and the one used here, is 95 %. The 95% confidence interval can be any size and quantifies the sampling error or imprecision of the survey results because some residents' opinions are relied onto estimate all residents' opinions.' 'A 95% confidence interval indicates that for every 100 random samples of this many residents, 95 of the confidence intervals created will include the "true" population response. This theory is applied in practice to mean that the "true" perspective of the target population lies 30