Unpaid Journalists
We are not paid to do the surveys. We have opted to not take clients. We have chosen to put ourselves in the role of journalists rather than company for hire.
That means that we control the questions, possible options for selection, and the reports. It allows us to use the data collected to generate reports without an employer wanting to silence questions they don’t want asked or opinions they don’t want expressed. We will still work very closely with various organizations to come up with questions that are useful to that board, council, or group. But, at the end of the day, we will be the ones responsible for the survey. We offer this as a free service to the community.
Even though our service is free, some entities will opt to use a different, paid service. They will do this for several reasons. Someone local who is doing it for free can sometimes feel like they aren’t “pro.” Sometimes, a reason is that they want to control how and if the results of the surveys are released to the public. Surveys done correctly without bias have results that are not controllable, so they can reveal information that people don’t want published. At first, it can seem like a “good question” until, oops, they didn’t get the response they were expecting. Maybe a decision-making group has already decided what they want to do. If the survey results agree, then they want to publish to support the position they have already decided on. If the results conflict with what they want, then the reports are delayed, obscured, edited to show only favored results, or simply never published.
We see our primary “customer” as the public, the people who take the surveys. Our intention is to ask questions about issues that they care about. We want to share the results of the surveys with our fellow island residents. We analyze the data to generate research and publish that, too, in order to eke out as much usefulness from the information as we can.
It costs us about $2,000 a year for the software and hosting to operate Madrona Voices. This does not include the time that we dedicate. We have opted to be unpaid because we think it benefits the community. We find it fun and interesting to do research. And, it fills a need. Plus, there are all the reasons above.