Agenda - Council Work Session - 05/18/2021 - Special

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Methods Selecting survey recipients All households within the City of Ramsey were eligible to participate in the survey. A list of all households within the zip codes serving Ramsey was purchased from Go -Dog Direct based on updated listings from the United States Postal Service. Since some of the zip codes that serve the City of Ramsey households may also serve addresses that lie outside of the community, the exact geographic location of each housing unit was compared to community boundaries using the most current municipal boundary file. Addresses located outside of the City of Ramsey boundaries were removed from the list of potential households to survey. Each address identified as being within city boundaries was further identified as being within one of the four City Wards or two City Precincts. From that list, addresses were randomly selected as survey recipients, with multi -family housing units (defined as those with a unit number) sampled at a rate of 5:3 compared to single family housing units. An individual within each household was selected using the birthday method. The birthday method selects a person within the household by asking the "person whose birthday has most recently passed" to complete the questionnaire. The underlying assumption in this method is that day of birth has no relationship to the way people respond to surveys. This instruction was contained in the introduction of the survey. Conducting the survey The 1,700 randomly selected households received mailings beginning on November 24, 2020 and the survey remained open for seven weeks. The first mailing was a postcard inviting the household to participate in the survey. The next mailing contained a cover letter with instructions, the survey questionnaire, and a postage -paid return envelope. The final mailing contained a reminder letter, another survey, and a postage -paid return envelope. All mailings included a web link to give residents the opportunity to respond to the survey online. All follow-up mailings asked those who had not completed the survey to do so and those who had already done so to refrain from completing the survey again. About 1% of the 1,700 mailed invitations or surveys were returned because the household address was vacant or the postal service was unable to deliver the survey as addressed. Of the remaining 1,675 households that received the invitations to participate, 459 completed the survey, providing an overall response rate of 27%. The response rate was calculated using AAPOR's response rate #2* for mailed surveys of unnamed persons. 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. 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 all respondents (459 completed surveys). Analyzing the data Responses from mailed surveys were entered into an electronic dataset using a "key and verify" method, where all responses are entered twice and compared to each other. Any discrepancies were resolved in comparison to the original survey form. Range checks as well as other forms of quality control were also performed. Responses from surveys completed on Polco were downloaded and merged with the mailed survey responses. The demographics of the survey respondents were compared to those found in the 2010 Census and 2017 American Community Survey estimates for adults in the City of Ramsey. The primary objective of weighting survey data is to make the survey respondents reflective of the larger population of the community. The characteristics used for weighting were age, sex, race, Hispanic origin, housing type, housing tenure, and area. No adjustments were made for design effects. Weights were calculated using an iterative, multiplicative raking model known as the ANES Weighting Alogrithm.* The results of the weighting scheme for the probability sample are presented in the following table. Unweighted Weighted Target* Age 18-34 90 300 31% 35-54 32% 41% 40% 55+ 59% 29% 28% Area Ward 1/Precinct 1 18% 17% 17% Ward 1/Precinct 2 4 o 5% 5%