PRECA 10-07-1992 - Laserfiche WebLink

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analyze the exploratory part of the survey, if the results needed further qualification. The exploratory .part of the questionnaire was designed to identify those areas where trail systems had impacted their respective communities in either a negative or positive way. The vehicle chosen was a mail survey and it was decided that. we would send them to the Directors or Superintendents of Park Systems. Since I was in a Marketing Research class at Augsburg College in Minneapolis, there were additional resources available to help design and evaluate the survey. ~, The original questionnaire was jointly developed by the Prior Lake Director of Parks and Recreation and myself. It was then tested by the six other members of the Prior Lake Parks Advisory Board at the February meeting and they were then asked for suggestions. The two page survey contained primarily closed-end questions. The descriptive part, page one, contained four main categories of questions. Category one consisted of ten questions that were on a community's existing trail system, The additional three categories consisted of one question each on the trail surface used, the funding mechanism and the current trail utilization. On two questions the respondents were asked to choose from a modified nominative scale. The last selection was for "Other" and if it was selected for trail surface or funding the respondent could enter a written response. ,~ The second page was the exploratory part of the questionnaire and it contained a matrix of ten rows with one each .for the ten citizen concerns we had encountered in our, past experience. The respondent was asked to compare trail areas to non-trail areas within the community and choose an entry on a Likert scale. -The choices were that the situation was Significantly Worse, Slightly Worse, the Same, Slightly Better, or Significantly Better. This approach was selected because it would allow the respondent to answer the question without going to the complaint records to do in depth research. The respondents were also offered the option of receiving the results in return for their participation and they could then enter their name and address. We committed to keeping the answers from any specific community confidential and; even though, this survey is being done in conjunction with a class, none of the individual questionnaires are being ,„ 4