[y66]

If you know of a good discussion of what is involved in producing a credible survey of community impacts and expectations for managing an environmental problem, please post links.

The goals are (1) to quantify perceived impacts and expectations in useful, objective ways by asking simple questions which are hopefully free from bias; (2) produce a summary of the resulting info that can be used for discussing the problem intelligently with local government officials and members of Congress; and (3) meet reasonable, minimum criteria for representativeness and freedom from bias.

There is no budget. The work will be done by volunteers. We have limited access to a professional survey design guy on a pro bono basis.

We will do several pilots and review the sample design, questionnaire and pilot results with the pro bono expert as we go.

Once we nail down the questionnaire and sample design, we will mail or hand deliver a flyer to selected addresses and ask recipients to fill out a simple online questionnaire for ease of tabulation. We will be clear that we intend to present aggregate survey results only and will encrypt individual replies.

We're not looking for the American Statistical Association's official seal of approval. We just want our results to be reasonably credible.

[kenberg]

I have no links, but of course I have thoughts..

1. Before you use it, try it out on a decent sized group. After they answer the survey questions, interview them to see if the answers to the survey expressed their views. Often when I answer these things I feel I have not really done justice to my views, the questions just were not right.

2. Try to insert questions that will get at whether the other answers are actually reliable. For example: I walk a lot in my neighborhood. I walk to a doctor's appointment. I do not walk to the Starbucks, there is no safe way to do so. So if I say that I would walk to Starbucks if there were better paths or sidewalks, you can believe me. If someone never walks in their neighborhood but says they would like sidewalks so that they could walk to Starbucks, some skepticism might be in order.

Good luck with this, I would like to hear more about it. Now I am going out for a walk.

[y66]

That's a pretty high useful content to link ratio. Many thanks.