A council survey has been criticised for not comparing apples with apples, giving pass marks when they have clearly failed.
Cr Michael Laws was unhappy with the marking of the council’s survey which had been done for the first time in three years.
The rankings were from one to 10 with 10 being the highest.
The bands were: seven-10 strongly satisfied/agree, four to six somewhat satisfied/agree, and one to three not satisfied or disagreed.
Cr Laws questioned whether a marking of four could be seen as being somewhat satisfied or somewhat agreed.
He said the big difference between the first three years of the survey and this year was the change in methodology of asking questions.
‘‘You are asking your questions in a slightly different way so you will get slightly different results,’’ Mr Laws said.
To reach a broader audience they used more online interviews and questions were more direct.
She said there was now less ‘‘do not know’’ answers and that helped the results.
Cr Laws said he would be better off to wait to next year to have a better read on the results.
But the way the ratings were done were average, he said.
‘‘If I were given a four I would fail. It’s a silly maths thing.You have lumped four, five and six together to give them sort of a pass. I really want to know how many people said four.’’
He said he could not understand how marking something a four is a somewhat satisfied/agree.
‘‘I am struggling to see why four is a pass when it is clearly a failure.’’
Ms Richards said a four was similar to a six.
‘‘It says you are improving but you could do better.’’
Cr Laws said they should have another band of 5-6 and then have a 3-4.
‘‘Four and six are not the same and I am sure that is what you taught you at primary school.’’
Council chief executive Richard Saunders said there had been a lengthy debate on the scoring system previously and at one stage somewhat satisfied was four to seven and very satisfied was eight to 10.
But the council had changed it back to four to six and seven to 10.
Mr Saunders said the council could recalibrate the information with four not being a pass.
Cr Laws said it would be good to get the marks of four out of the somewhat satisfied equation and get a more accurate reading of what people thought of the council.
Mr Saunders would take a look and report back to the council.
