Nothing really surprised me here. Our parks got high marks. I was actually surprised we didn’t get a 100% rating on that. But since I am a cynical bastard I am always looking for the negatives. While I have said in the past that I find the survey VERY, VERY unscientific (It was mailed twice to 3,000 homes and only 922 people responded) I find the high marks and low marks right on. I have been saying for at least two years our city leaders have wax in their ears and we don’t spend enough money on our roads. Well guess what, the respondents said the same thing;
32% rated our streets in good condition (in other words 68% percent are not really impressed, and since we don’t spend our 2nd penny entirely on them, this should come as no surprise). Besides who has money for roads when the Rhinos at the zoo need 4-Star accomodations.
I think if our public officials are getting an under 50% rating  on listening to citizens, that should be concerning. But I really think they do not care. Fast Forward to April 13th please.
Here is one line from the survey that makes me go hmmmm. Just exactly who was this survey intended for?
85% voted in the last general election.
Obviously it was only mailed to registered voters.
This city has about 70,000 registered voters. 85% of that is 59,500. It would take 2 to 3 mayors races to get that many votes if my memory serves me correctly.
So your saying like I have said all along, this survey is unscientific and a joke?
Was wrong on my guesstimate of registered Sioux Falls voters. That’s 88,163 as of April 8th 2008. Let’s see. 85% of that is a mere 74,938.
Ballots cast in the last city election held on April 8th, 2008?
A whopping 12,392. Or 14.06% So yeah…I’m calling the survey flawed …or at the very least, done with the use of fuzzy math. But then, we already knew that.
The only question is whether the people answered that question honestly or the survey itself was skewed somehow.
Is this the best we could do when the mayor hired a 6 figure pr woman? I heard she is transfering to a civil service position before the mayors term is up. That would lock her into a city salary for life!
Don’t be too hard on Jodi. She just did what MANY would have similarly done.
Jodi is the least of my concerns when it comes to bad decisions our mayor has made. Spending $30,000 for a survey that is unscinetific is a bit silly.
Just glancing at the sampling methods described in the various reports – looks to me like this IS indeed a truly scientific survey. Or at least as scientific as any social science survey CAN be.
PS – I have a clue – I tutor grad students in HOW to do this stuff.
As to the “85% voted” question Poly has – it stands to reason that people who respond to surveys are people who are interested in civic affairs – just as are voters, as opposed to those who don’t either answer surveys OR vote.
I think the point Poly was making was that people were likely lying about voting. How is it that 85% of the 922 people that were polled just happened to vote in the past election, when voter turnout was at like 6% (school board election). That result tells me that this survey is flawed.
Well it might make sense to some degree that the type of person who is involved and active in city government (the type of person who cares enough to vote) is also the same type who cares enough to fill out a survey.
Who knows… but I still call into the question how they refer to it as a “scientific” survey when I don’t see how that is possible. They can attempt to mail surveys to a diverse demograhic, but what are they basing that upon? If it is just registered voters and excludes non voters, it is already biased. If it is based upon race and ignores things like economic status (or vice versa) it is unscientific.
I just don’t know how they deem this to be scientific in basis when the opposite would appear true. Just because they say it has a margin of + or – 3% does not make it scientific (although I’d like to know what orifice they pulled that margin from).
That, and like I said when they were first mailed out, they have no barcode tracking on the surveys, so they don’t know what houses they are coming from. All 922 surveys could have came from the South side of town, they have no way of knowing.