January 28, 2008

CARY , NC – Beginning Friday, February 1, consultants working for the Town of Cary will start contacting more than 400 Cary residents asking them to state their opinions on how well their government works for them.  Topics will include solid waste, taxes, safety, quality of life, customer service, communications, street repair, and recreation programs.  The scientific poll will be conducted via telephone through February 29, with citizens being asked to spend about 25 minutes answering about 50 questions. The survey’s margin of error will not exceed +/- 5 percent.

“We hope that those who are called will take the time to give us the feedback we need by participating fully in the survey,” said Town of Cary Public Information Officer Susan Moran .   “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.”  Moran added that few other governments—local, state or federal--have a regular program of gathering citizen opinion in a scientifically valid manner.  The Town of Cary has been conducting its citizen satisfaction survey every other year since 1998.

This is the sixth Town-sponsored citizen satisfaction survey focusing on the operations and services handled each day by the Town government.  As with previous surveys, Biennial 2008 has three parts: (1) questions that are asked from survey to survey to give the Town an opportunity to see trends in its performance; (2) questions that change from survey to survey to give the Town information on current or emerging issues; and (3) demographic questions such as age, sex, race, and education that help ensure that the sample of respondents are a scientifically representative group of the total population of Cary.

“Just like Gallop, Nielsen, and other national and international pollsters, our consultants utilize long-standing scientifically tested sampling techniques and statistical analyses that allow the survey results to be generalized over the entire population even though not everyone in Cary is being called,” said Moran. 

All responses to the survey will be 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’s consultants will conduct in February as part of the study based on the survey findings.

Following a national request for proposals, Cary has contracted with BKL Research of Salem, VA to conduct the study and related focus groups at a cost of $26,000.  The survey report is expected in March followed by the focus group report in April.

Results from Cary ’s previous biennial surveys are available online in the Research section of www.townofcary.org.

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