The survey says ...

Jeff Green | Nov 25, 2016

I always love that line from the tv show where a family stands in order in front of a goofy host and tries to fill in a statement such as “Pasta is to spaghetti as pie is to ___?

They give their answer and the hosts says, ... “and the survey says ...”

I wonder who took that survey, where those hundred people came from. Imagine you are walking down the street and someone accosts you, asking what you think about the relationship between spaghetti, pasta, and pie. Do you run? Do you wave our hands in front of your face and cover your eyes? Or do you pause and think, should I say pumpkin? Coconut cream? Apple or cherry?

Frontenac County and South Frontenac Township's Recreation Department both conducted surveys this year, and North Frontenac Community Services is undertaking one this month.

The similarities and differences in these surveys are interesting, as are the results.

The South Frontenac Survey was undertaken this spring and summer. 697 surveys were filled in. With a population of 18,000 or so, that represents about 4% of the population, but some of those responses could represent entire families. It also represents those residents in South Frontenac who use Recreation facilities or participate in local recreation. In a township where much of the population is located close to large recreation facilities in Kingston, the 697 responses were seen by township staff and council as a solid result.

When the survey was presented to Council this fall, it was taken as a bit of a wish list, particularly the question about what kinds of facilities people would like to see built. But as the Recreation Department, which has only 1 full time employee, develops a 5 year plan it is good to know what people are interested in seeing come about.

Some of the responses will not be relevent to that plan. When asked what people would like to see if “money were no object” almost a third of the respondants, 191, had a swimming pool as their first choice. Council is not running out and building a pool, particularly when almost everyone in the township lives in walking or bicycle range to a lake. However, the fact that about half the respondents use the library system and half use the arena (the two are not mutually exclusive) is important to know, and the detail in the survey results about cycling opportunities is relevant to the township's cycling strategy moving forward. The survey was done in-house, at a low cost.

Frontenac County had a more difficult task when conducting a survey this fall. While people know what a park is, they don't really know what Frontenac County does. It is not that surprising then, that even drawing from a larger population (27,000) in the end 274 individuals completed the recent Frontenac County Survey. And given the lack of profile of many Frontenac County services, an average of 220 responses were entered for each question. To demonstrate the problem that the county faces, of those who responded to the survey, who are essentially the most engage 0.8% of the county population, only 179 said they were “somewhat or very familiar with the “services, programs and operations of Frontenac County”. 97 were “somewhat unfamiliar,” “very unfamiliar”, or “knew nothing at all” about county operations.

Over 60% of respondents were somewhat or very satisfied with the land ambulance service, which is county run, and over 65% felt that way about the Kingston Frontenac Public Library (which is run by an independent board that has county and city representation).

The level of satisfaction for Fairmount Home, the county run long term care facility, seems low, at first glance. Only 28% of respondents said they were somewhat or very satisfied with the service at Fairmount, but this does not really reflect dissatisfaction. Only 8% of respondents were somewhat or very dissatisfied. The bulk of respondents either did not know (48%) or had no opinion (14%).

Fairmount regularly surveys its own clientele and their families as part of its operating procedures.

The County survey also asked if residents would like to see it take the lead on a number of fronts: social services, economic development, planning, transportation, etc, and the most common response was that the county should work with partners to improve service in these areas.

While County CAO Kelly Pender said the survey will provide a baseline of information for future efforts in a low key presentation of its results at council last week, care should be taken not to use any of the data that was collected to justify new initiatives or spending.

Aside from any statistical significance of a survey that reaches less than 1% of the population, the low real numbers make the survey open to distortions of many kinds. If, for example, all of the members of council, CAO’s, treasurers and Public Works Managers from the townships and county filled in the survey, that would be almost 50 people. That would mean that people intimately involved with delivering all the services would have a large impact on the results. The number of responses was so low that any group that is over-represented in the survey would have an over-sized impact.

Perhaps the most important messages from the county survey are the low overall response rate and the fact that those who did fill out the survey left almost a 1/4 of the questions blank.