No, no, & no.
http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071210/NEWS16/712100346
$35,000 Survey
created by justareviewer on Dec 10, 2007 at 11:31:00 am Comments: 4
Comments ... #
Nice. You can always do an internet survey with some open ended questions as well as the standard fodder. You can reasonably predict what a high percentage of people will say, but who knows maybe someone will come up with something creative or we'll learn something new about our fellow regular folks.
"Why should people who have never voted or who haven't voted in years be asked how taxpayer money should be spent?"
Because they're taxpaying citizens unless the voting elite votes to revoke the nonvoting masses' rights with their electoral pom-poms.
That's fine charlatan, but then the survey results need to be filtered extensively, so we can see how unregistered voters respond versus registered voters.
And among registered voters, how do the responses compare between those who have voted in at least one November election in the last five years versus those who have not voted in the past five years.
Will board of elections data be used to help select the survey sample, and will board of elections data be included in the final crosstab report? Or will screener questions be used to determine registered and unregistered voters? Will this be a bonehead, simple, useless survey that doesn't care about demos and who's registered to vote, or will it be a true technical, market research-type survey?
If the survey is suppose to be a real market research-type survey, then the final results cannot be displayed by only a Total banner point. The data needs to be filtered by the basic demos like most market research surveys (age, race, gender, education, household size, household income, marital status, employment status), along with zip code or voting precinct (location) and maybe something like the number of years as a Toledo resident.
The concerns for a 30-year Toledo resident may be different from a 2-year Toledo resident. The concerns for someone living in North Toledo may be different than someone living in West Toledo. The concerns for someone with a Masters degree may be different than someone who didn't complete high school.
Obviously, the survey needs to be fairly represented. The results should not mostly come from one area of the city or from one age group, etc. Will the data need to be weighted?
I think the 2008 budget is over 300 pages long. The crosstab report for this survey could be bigger.
An extensively filtered crosstab report, however, could be used for harm by city officials. They could chose to ignore the responses for those in a certain income bracket, age group, or education level. But I assume the final results, no matter how large and detailed the report, will be available to the public.
If the survey is approved by council, and if the survey methodology is known, then one of the local media orgs should interview a panel / sample specialist at one of the Toledo area market research firms for more info and maybe insight into the validity of such a survey.
Somewhat related is this August 2007 Toledo Talk posting titled Interesting Daily Kos poll question about local concerns.
To me the survey would be interesting but bordering on trivial in some regards. I always thought it was interesting in terms of the federal budget that people were generally against welfare and foreign aid, yet earmarked more coin for them then the current government allotted.
I'm sorry I don't have the same sort of piousness towards voting. When's the last time your vote decided an election? When do you think it will in the future?
Statistically you're probably for the most part wasting your time and the choices are very limited and not very reflective of actual your views.If it sounds cynical, I blame science, namely mathematics (and that Dianetics book I'm rereading backwards).
A possible analog: If the choice is between school food or a Happy Meal, I'll decline both because I'd rather have something nutritious and tasty (like a home-brewed beer or wine perhaps).
But I still think it's open-ended questions and fresh ideas the city needs to go after. There's more than a few economists that claim that scarcity is obsolete, so why do the are schools, industry, governments operating in the red. Obviously, the same dystopian ideas and dystopian institutions aren't working except to produce miserable dystopian citizens. Or maybe I'm not hearing the people I interact with everyday correctly.
Point being I think too many people are operating with the same obsolete tools and ideas trying to fix obsolete structures.
It's probably necessary to question all current economic, education, health, political, financial dogma now more than ever.
What's funny is the opening sentence in the Blade story:
Spend taxpayer money to see how taxpayers want their money spent.
Anyway, wasn't Toledo suppose to do the survey before the budget was released last month? I wonder if this is just a token survey, so officials can later say a survey was conducted? Still, I would be interested in the results even if city officials are not.
Voter turnout last month was around 30%, at least county-wide. Not sure about Toledo specifically. So will the survey be given only to those who voted last month?
If city council approves the survey funding, which I believe they will, then I'd like to know the specifics of the survey methodology. Why should people who have never voted or who haven't voted in years be asked how taxpayer money should be spent?
posted by jr on Dec 10, 2007 at 12:17:44 pm #