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Health & Fitness

City Manager disrespects citizens/voters

Novato City Manager Michael Frank was less than happy with the recent community survey results, which were discussed at length June 18. 

“From my point of view, this is just information,” Frank said. “Someone just filling out a survey doesn't have the background and the knowledge that we have.” 

Someone should remind Mr. Frank that while he may have an inflated opinion of the knowledge that “we” – whomever that is -has he still must answer to “us” – the residents of Novato.  The low return rate is not unusual in the world of surveys and might well provide some good information should it be carefully evaluated by someone without obvious biases.

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A survey’s response rate is the result of dividing the number of people who were interviewed by the total number of people in the sample who were eligible to participate and should have been interviewed.

A low response rate can give rise to sampling bias if the nonresponse is unequal among the participants regarding exposure and/or outcome.

Find out what's happening in Novatowith free, real-time updates from Patch.

For many years, a survey's response rate was viewed as an important indicator of survey quality. Many observers presumed that higher response rates assure more accurate survey results however Holbrook et al. (2005) assessed whether lower response rates are associated with less unweighted demographic representativeness of a sample. By examining the results of 81 national surveys with response rates varying from 5 percent to 54 percent, they found that surveys with much lower response rates were only minimally less accurate.

 Holbrook, Allyson, Jon Krosnick, and Alison Pfent. 2007. “The Causes and Consequences of Response Rates in Surveys by the News Media and Government Contractor Survey Research Firms.” In Advances in telephone survey methodology, ed. James M. Lepkowski, N. Clyde Tucker, J. Michael Brick, Edith D. De Leeuw, Lilli Japec, Paul J. Lavrakas, Michael W. Link, and Roberta L. Sangster. New York: Wiley.

 

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