CARY, NC – Starting this Saturday, consultants working for the Town of Cary will begin contacting more than 400 Cary residents, asking them to voice their opinions on how well their government works as Cary conducts Biennial 2002--the third Town-sponsored citizen satisfaction survey focusing on the operations and services handled each day by the Town. Topics include transit, taxes, safety, quality of life, customer service, communications, growth management, senior issues, street repair, and recreation programs. The scientific poll will be conducted via telephone throughout the first weeks of January, with citizens being asked to spend around 20 minutes answering about 50 questions. Spanish speaking interviewers will be provided for any Hispanic respondents that may be randomly contacted.

"We continue to learn a great deal about how we’re doing and what’s important to our citizens with our surveys, and we’re looking forward to hearing from citizens again this year," said Cary Town Manager Bill Coleman. "We hope that those who are contacted will take the time to give us feedback by participating fully in the survey." Coleman added that most governments—local, state or federal—do not have a regular program of gathering citizen opinion in a scientifically valid manner.

As with the 1998 and 2000 surveys, Cary’s Biennial 2002 has three major parts: (1) questions that are asked from survey to survey to give the Town an opportunity to track its performance; (2) questions that change from survey to survey to give the Town information on current or emerging issues; and (3) demographic questions which tell the Town basic information about the people who are responding to the survey such as age, sex, race, and education.

Just like Gallop, Nielsen, and other national and international pollsters, consultants for the Town are utilizing scientifically developed sampling techniques and statistical analysis that allow the survey results to be generalized over the entire population even though not everyone in Cary is being called. The acceptable margin of error for the 2002 survey will be +/- 5 percent.

All responses to the survey are anonymous, and demographic information will only be used in the aggregate. However, respondents will be given the opportunity to give their identifying information if they are interested in participating in one of several focus groups that the Town will conduct in March as part of the study based on the survey findings.

Cary has contracted with BKL Research of Salem, VA to conduct the study at a cost of $19,100. The survey report is expected in February followed by the focus group report in late March.

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