Executive Summary of Results from Survey of Pelham Residents
The public survey conducted in the Town of Pelham began on March 4th as part of a larger research design, involving interviews and online surveys of planners, as well as a focus group of Pelham residents.
These methods were chosen based on their ability to capture the opinions and perceptions of the planner and the public – the key players in the endeavour to improve consultation as part of the planning process.
We expected the public survey to quantify the value of past consultation experiences and the capacity for public involvement. The questionnaire design also permitted the relationship between particular resident characteristics and behaviours to be better understood.
Survey Sample Size
We estimated that 135 completed surveys would be needed to lend statistical validity to the results of certain questions. Assuming a response rate of 30%, this meant approaching a minimum of 450 households.
Pelham is a community of 15,272 citizens and the average household size in the Region of Niagara is 2.7 people. Hence, the number of households in Pelham can be estimated at 5,656. If one in every twelve households is selected, the sample size reaches 471.
Taking every twelfth entry in the Town of Pelham phonebook yielded 494 potential survey respondents. This number was whittled down to the final sample size of 455 in the following ways:
Survey Response Rate
Visiting potential respondents between 3:00pm and 7:00pm during weekdays, 154 people provided a yes or no answer for completing the survey during my visit. The completion versus refusal rate for this group is 87.7% (or 135 out of 154). The remaining 301 homes were provided with a postage paid envelope containing a blank survey. We received 68 completed surveys by return post (22.6%). The combined response rate was an encouraging 44.6% (203 out of 455).
We broke the potential survey respondents into twelve zones of urban (yellow), rural (green) and mixed (blue) character, ranging in size from 11 to 56 households.
The number of completions (and corresponding completion/refusal rates) for each zone can be identified in Table 1 (including four mailed responses of known origin):
Table 1: Completion and Refusal Rates Corresponding to Zone Character
The rate of completion versus refusal remains high in all areas (90.67% in urban areas, 88.89% in rural areas, and 81.58% in mixed zones); though slightly less so in areas of mixed character. Since the parameters of this survey protect anonymity, it is impossible to know the zone of origin for the majority (64 of 68) of the returned surveys and produce the overall response rate for each zone.
Survey Data and Observations
The first question asked residents to place the number of years that they had lived in the Town of Pelham into one of six categories (see Table 2 below). All 203 answered this question, providing a median response in the 11-20 year category, and nearly half (90 of 203, 44.3%) of those surveyed have lived in Pelham for twenty or more years.
Table 2: Length of Residency in Pelham for Survey Respondents
The second question inquired as to whether or not the respondent had previously attended a public meeting for a planning proposal. Since the Town of Pelham has not officially updated its municipal plan since 1970, these terms were left necessarily broad and open to each respondent’s interpretation.
All but one of the 203 respondents (99.5%) completed this question, with a total of 57 indicating that they had previously attended a public meeting.
Breaking this number down by the surveys completed at the door versus those returned by mail, one can see that there is a slightly greater chance of a resident having attended a public meeting if they sent in their reply via post. This may mean that prior involvement with a planning issue proved one of the incentives for completing the survey.
Table 3: Percentage of Residents with Previous Experience at Public Meetings
However, perhaps more interesting still is the correlation that exists between the length of residency and the likelihood of attending a public meeting. In general, as Table 4 shows, there is a positive correlation between the length of residency and the attendance rate. If a resident has lived in Pelham less than a year, it is highly unlikely (0%) that they will have attended a meeting. That said, by the time that citizens have lived in town thirty-one or more years, more than two in five (40.82%) have done so.
Table 4: Correlation Between Length of Residency and Attendance at Public Meetings
It is important to note that this is not a profiling measure. It is entirely possible, perhaps even probable, that the reason for the high attendance rate from the residency category of 31+ is simply a greater number of opportunities. However, it can also be an indicator of how quickly residents become assimilated to perceived public duties and responsibilities.
As a follow-up to the second question, those respondents who attended a public meeting evaluated their experience on a scale between 1 and 10, with one being the lowest and ten being the highest. This provided some of the survey’s most intriguing data, especially when combined with data from the concurrent online survey to practicing planners.
The fifty-six respondents gave their meeting experiences a mean score of 5.19. The average score from the door-to-door respondents was 5.12, while the mailed responses assigned an average score of 5.30. The median and the mode were 5.00 in all cases.
However, as Chart 1 shows, residents were almost as likely to evaluate their experience with a 1 or a 10 as they were a more neutral number. The result is a distribution that has three distinct humps, though a 62.5% majority of the respondents offered an evaluation between 1 and 5 as opposed to 6 through 10.
This information compares distinctly with that received from a parallel online survey that we sent to 797 planners practicing in Ontario. From the thirty-seven completed responses (which have been multiplied out to be on par with the public responses), one can see that the planner has a much higher esteem of current public consultation practices.
Chart 1: Relationship of Planner and Public Evaluations of Consultation Methods
The average score that the planner assigns to his/her own practices is 7.30, with a median and mode of 8.00 respectively.
However, when asked to guess how the public perceives their combination of methods, the planner is much more modest. In general, the planner drops their evaluative score by approximately one point, and the average falls to 5.92 with a mode of 7.00 and a median of 6.00. Chart 1 demonstrates how these trends relate to each other.
The fourth question asked residents to accomplish two things: first, to place a dot on a Town of Pelham map indicating the location of their residence; and second, to highlight areas on the same map for which they considered themselves highly competent to discuss planning issues.
One hundred eighty-five respondents (91.6%) completed the first part of this question, including 129 of 135 (95.6%) at the door and 56 of 68 (82.4%) via mail. The higher rate of completion at the door is almost certainly attributable to the assistance requested from the researcher on site. Six mailed responses indicated difficulty reading the map, likely explaining the lower response rate.
Overall, 157 (or 77.3%) of the respondents completed the second portion of the question. One hundred eighteen (87.4%) of the door to door and 39 (or 57.4%) of the mailed returns had some portion of the map highlighted. Again, the higher response rate at the door is almost certainly attributable to the influence of the interviewing researcher.
The Town of Pelham comprises of an area of 126.42km2, divided into approximately two hundred sixteen square centimetres on the map. This made each square centimetre equal to approximately 0.5853km2.
On average, residents highlighted 20.15cm2 (or 11.79km2). However, the median was 3.65cm2 and the mode a paltry 0.5cm2. Table 5 displays how the data breaks down in terms of responses received at the door and via mail.
Table 5: Analysis of Areas Highlighted by Respondent Groups
While there is a significant difference in the average number of square centimetres (4.29) highlighted between those received at the door versus those received via mail; it seems less likely that it is attributable to interviewer bias, as both the median and mode are higher for the mailed responses.
As evidenced by the combined mode score of 0.5cm2 and Chart 2 below, most residents highlight very small areas – with only a few (17) expressing confidence on planning issues for fifty or more square centimetres. By contrast, over half (85 of 157, 54.1%) identify an area of five or fewer square centimetres (2.93km2) as their area of expertise.
Chart 2: Distribution of Areas of Planning Confidence for Pelham Residents
Taking the data from the second portion of this question and combining it with data from some of the earlier questions leads to some more interesting results (see Tables 6 and 7).
Tables 6 and 7: Influence of Residency and Meeting Evaluation on Areas of Competence
For example, the length of residency in the Town of Pelham does not seem to have a profound impact on the size of area for which the average citizen would consider themselves knowledgeable in planning issues. A person who has lived in town less than one year highlights more area than someone who has called Pelham home for 21-30 years, and almost as much as those with thirty-one or more years of residency.
It may be that those who have lived in Pelham for 21-30 years are part of a cohort (i.e. baby boomers) that is busy with more pressing issues such as child rearing and career. However, in the absence of supporting socio-economic data, this is hard to prove.
As one might expect, those who have lived in town the longest do highlight the greatest area, but there does not appear to be a stable relationship between the length of residency and the area of planning issue competence.
Similarly, there is no stable relationship between previous experience at a public meeting and the amount of area that a citizen will highlight. While it is true that a citizen who had a neutral (5) or highly positive (10) experience will highlight a greater area than a person who had a highly negative (1) encounter, the degree of correlation is rather tenuous.
However, and perhaps most interestingly, a sizeable difference can be observed between the amount of area highlighted when one compares those that have been to a public meeting and those that have not.
Table 8: Relationship Between Simple Attendance and Areas of Planning Competence
As Table 8 shows, those residents that have previously attended a public meeting tend to highlight areas of planning competence approximately half the size of those that have never been to a meeting before. This would seem to indicate, as supported by participant comments, that those who have previously been to a public meeting tend to think of planning issues in terms of the site-specific circumstance that caused them to participate.
Residents that have previously attended a public meeting were almost equally likely to include their house in their area of expertise, perhaps indicating that neighbourhood knowledge or some subtle form of NIMBYism is a pervasive trait.
Table 9: Likelihood of Including Residence in Area of Planning Issue Expertise
The fifth question asked residents to estimate the number of hours that citizens that they knew of would devote to public consultation over a six month period.
The overall average number of hours devoted was 18.36, with a slightly higher average (21.58) coming from the door to door respondents versus that of the mailed returns (10.84). The overall mode and median were 2.00 and 4.00 respectively, numbers echoed from the door to door respondents. The mailed returns had a slightly lower median of 3.00 with the same mode.
Naturally, we looked for correlations between the length of residency as well as the evaluative score to the number of hours pledged for consultation. However, this question had a significantly outlying response deserving of special consideration.
One resident pledged an extraordinary 1050 hours over the six month period. While the gesture seemed quite genuine – and certainly worth noting as to the extent of passion that some residents have regarding planning – it is also equivalent to more than forty hours a week, and should be disregarded from the statistical analysis.
After making this adjustment, one can see in Tables 10 and 11 that neither a person’s length of tenure in Pelham, nor his or her experience at a previous public meeting seems to make a significant impact on the number of hours devoted.
Tables 10 and 11: Influence of Residency and Past Public Meetings on Hours Devoted
In particular, the gap between the number of hours that an attendee and a non-attendee would devote to future consultation is not as great as one might expect. Perhaps it is just a desire to be seen in a favourable light by their peers, but those who have never been to a public meeting show a strong willingness to come out in the future. At the very least, it would seem that those who have come out in the past have not been ‘hooked’ into coming out in the future.
However, there are two notable exceptions to these conclusions. The first is the data from the evaluative scores of 1 and 8. Even after the outlier is removed, the average number of hours remains at a remarkably high 20.56 hours for those who evaluated their experience with the lowest possible score. This would suggest that those who categorized their prior experience as entirely ineffective were among the most likely to devote significant time in the future. One possible explanation for this phenomenon would suggest that this is a cohort of people that would like to see public consultation succeed, and are more concerned by what they see as poor process as opposed to poor results.
The high number of hours pledged by those who assigned their previous experience a score of 8 out of 10 is perhaps a little trickier to understand, but not out of the realm of comprehension. Again, the answer would appear to be found in process, not results.
Comments made by those who gave this result noted that they found the consultation exercises to be informative, and were encouraged by the fact that they could ask questions and genuinely participate. Perhaps unfortunately, there simply are not that many (6) of this like mind.
Final Conclusions
In light of the information gathered from this survey, the following conclusions can be made: