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Background and Methodology
The
2004 Quality of Life survey was distributed July 2, 2004 based on
direction from council to conduct an annual survey using “in-house”
resources and every fifth year hire professional with survey
expertise to conduct the survey.
Factors
and services generally associated with the “quality of life” were
used as the basis for narrowing the scope of the survey performed
last year. It intentionally requests feedback on services, as
opposed to issues. Twenty-four statements related to quality of life
services were listed on the survey. Respondents were invited to
write general comments on the front of the survey. If they marked
that they strongly disagreed or disagreed with any of the quality of
life statements, they were asked to provide comments so that we
might work to improve. The survey tool has been included as
Appendix I in the attached report.
Two
thousand surveys were sent out in an effort to ensure that there
were at least 382 responses necessary to achieve a 95% confidence
interval of +/-5% points. This was criteria consistent with the
professionally selected sample size last year. We received 720
surveys by July 23, 2004 for a 36% response rate (720/2000). The
survey sample was selected by a computer program generated by MIS.
The program selects every seventh address in the utility billing
database. The program skips previous sample selections to ensure
that over time the surveys reach as many of the citizens as
possible.
As
surveys were received, they were entered into a survey software tool
that generates reports on the responses. The attached report
summarizes the results of the survey. The citizens rated quality of
life very well in Loveland.
Results: Those surveyed believe the City is
performing well
Greater
than 80% of the citizens strongly agree or agree that Loveland is
performing well on 13 of 24 quality of life services. Seven of
those statements generated positive responses from 90% of more of
the citizens that responded to the survey.
One
thousand seven hundred ninety-nine responses were written in on the
surveys. It was clear from the comments that two factors influenced
responses to statements about shopping opportunities, job
opportunities, quality development, traffic flow and street
surfaces:
The
report provides information on common themes in the comments and a
quantitative categorization of comments by division. All of the
responses are available for your review in Appendix II. While the
survey was designed to elicit responses for improvement, there were
94 positive comments related to appreciation for the opportunity to
provide feedback and that Loveland is quality community.
All of
the results, including comments, have been distributed to the
departments so that specific suggestions could be reviewed for
action. All respondents that requested responses or asked to be
contacted have already been contacted. Many of the responses
indicated that a public information effort geared at clarifying
services provided by the City (as opposed to the school district for
instance) and reporting the efforts already underway to address
concerns would be valuable. We have already begun working on
articles, and we are considering a regular question and answer
format to deliver information to the citizens. |
