Let’s make a survey
We are happy to work with most organizations and groups in creating a survey.
We are not for hire. This means we do not accept money to do the survey. We do this because we do not want someone to hire us for the purpose of limiting the distribution of the surveys that we do or to limit the research that we publish.
Assuming that your goal is to learn what a representative sample of the island population thinks about an issue and you are willing to share the results of the survey with the public, then we are willing to do the survey at no cost to you.
We will require the survey to be as unbiased as possible: in the background information provided, the questions asked, and in the answer options provided. We will publish the results of the survey on our site. As long as it is clearly expressed in the survey, we may be willing to exclude the publication of certain elements of the survey. But, that is to be decided and mutually agreed upon before the survey is distributed.
We will not share the names or any identifying information of the respondents with you.
Why should you do a survey?
There are several elements to a survey and reasons to consider doing them. One is to help educate the public. Many questions need some background information to be provided in order for the respondent to be able to make an informed choice. That background information provides an excellent opportunity to provide factual information about the issue. It is essential that this factual information be as unbiased as possible.
Surveys help you know where the community is on an issue. It also helps you know what areas need more focus by your organization. It may help you know where to improve your communications.
It helps you discover what the community thinks. It is easy to surround ourselves with people who share a similar perspective and fail to realize that most others have a different perspective or a misunderstanding of things you took for granted.
Our surveys have been repeatedly representative of Orcas Island. We compare the demographics of those taking our survey to the known demographics obtained from the Census and voter registration records. We can demonstrate that those taking our surveys match the key known demographics. Plus, we can demonstrate that our results match the vote.
Its free. Normally, a properly done survey that does a representative sample via phone or mail will cost between $5,000 and $25,000 dollars, depending on the method and how representative of the community you want it to be. We enjoy being useful to our community. We enjoy learning what people think and studying the results of the surveys. Basically, we just love information and research, and this is a productive way to do it.
We can do a survey very quickly. We can provide preliminary answers within a day of releasing the survey, and solid answers within a week. The time to design a survey without bias is what takes the most time. We vet our surveys through volunteers that help us eliminate bias. The time it takes to design a survey is highly dependent on the complexity of the subject and the length of the survey.
Talk to us. We want to do surveys that are useful and important to the community.