1994 Citizen Attitude Survey__Report of Findings

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INTERPRETATION OF RESULTS The reporting of results can be most easily followed by referring to the questionnaire in Appendix 1. Pooled mean scores for all question items have been inserted in the questionnaire for easy reading. A pooled mean score refers to the mean value for all respondents rating that question. Example Analysis For instance, glancing at the first page of the questionnaire (page 54), one observes that 324 respondents (93.9% of the total number of households returning questionnaires) rated the first item on page 1. This was the item on promoting and enhancing business activity in the City. The individual rating of each respondent ranged from 1 to 9. The 324 individual ratings were summed, then divided by 324 to obtain the mean value of 5.4. This is the pooled mean value for this question item. All scaled question items have similar pooled mean values. The reader might want to take a moment to glance through the questionnaire to become more acquainted with some of these pooled mean values. Proceeding to another example, on page 59 are the results of six question items having to do with preferences toward growth strategies. Item #6 shows the highest pooled mean value (7.1), followed by limiting growth using whatever legal means available (6.8). The lowest mean value was given to annexing land and zoning it for residential development (3.0). These pooled mean scores would seem to indicate an overall preference for a limited growth strategy of almost any kind. However, the analysis should not stop here. Many question items in the questionnaire showed important differences in response patterns when taking into account the particular social -economic background of the respondent. For the six growth strategy items on page 59, the age of the respondent appeared to have a significant impact on the rating of items. Table 6 shows this clearly: 10