Few have opinion

A muted response to this year's Dunedin Residents' Opinion Survey has Dunedin City Council staff scratching their heads.

The council posted about 4500 surveys to randomly-selected homes across the city last month, and had expected about 1000 to be eturned by the close of the survey period yesterday.

However, council policy team manager Nicola Johnston confirmed the deadline for survey returns had been extended by a week, until May 27, due to the low number of returns.

Only about 600 had been received, which was "good enough" for statistical purposes but below the 1000 received last year, she said.

"We're just leaving it open a bit longer, so that we can hopefully encourage some more returns," she said.

She was not sure what might have caused the lower-than-usual response rate this year.

"Your guess is as good as mine . . . We followed similar processes to previous years."

Those who had not yet returned their surveys were urged to do so, while those not selected to receive one could still complete the survey online, she said.

The two sets of data for postal and online survey results would not be weighted equally, but would be compared, Research First director Roger Larkins - whose company was conducting the survey - said last month.

- chris.morris@odt.co.nz

 

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