Agenda - Council - 09/13/2016 - Laserfiche WebLink

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The National Citizen SurveyTM Survey Administration and Response Selected households received three mailings, one week apart, beginning on April 8, 2016. 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 seven weeks. About 1% of the 1,50o surveys mailed were returned because the housing unit was vacant or the postal service was unable to deliver the survey as addressed. Of the remaining 1,481 households that received the survey, 462 completed the survey, providing an overall response rate of 31%. Table 81: Survey Response Rates Number mailed Undeliverable Overall 1,500 19 Eligible 1,481 Returned Response rate 462 31% Confidence Intervals It is customary to describe the precision of estimates made from surveys by a "level 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 on to estimate all residents' opinions.l The margin of error for the City of Ramsey survey is no greater than plus or minus five percentage points around any given percent reported for the entire sample (462 completed surveys). For subgroups of responses, the margin of error increases because the sample size for the subgroup is smaller. For subgroups of approximately 10o respondents, the margin of error is plus or minus io percentage points. Survey Processing (Data Entry) Upon receipt, completed surveys were assigned a unique identification number. Additionally, each survey was reviewed and "cleaned" as necessary. For example, a question may have asked a respondent to pick two items out of a list of five, but the respondent checked three; in this case, NRC would use protocols to randomly choose two of the three selected items for inclusion in the dataset. All surveys then were entered twice into an electronic dataset; any discrepancies were resolved in comparison to the original survey form. Range checks as well as other forms of quality control were also performed. Survey Data Weighting The demographic characteristics of the survey sample were compared to those found in the 2010 Census and American Community Survey estimates for adults in the City of Ramsey. The primary objective of weighting survey data is to make the survey sample reflective of the larger population of the community. The characteristics used for weighting were sex and age. The results of the weighting scheme are presented in the following table. 1 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 within the confidence interval created for a single survey. For example, if 75% of residents rate a service as "excellent" or "good," then the 4% margin of error (for the 95% confidence interval) indicates that the range of likely responses for the entire community is between 71% and 79%. This source of uncertainty is called sampling error. In addition to sampling error, other sources of error may affect any survey, including the non -response of residents with opinions different from survey responders. Though standardized on The NCS, on other surveys, differences in question wording, order, translation and data entry, as examples, can lead to somewhat varying results. 32